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e Capitalist <strong>and</strong> the Entrepreneur
e Capitalist <strong>and</strong> the Entrepreneur<br />
Essays on Organizations <strong>and</strong> Markets<br />
Peter G. Klein
Copyright © 2010 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute<br />
Published under the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0.<br />
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/<br />
Ludwig von Mises Institute<br />
518 West Magnolia Avenue<br />
Auburn, Alabama 36832<br />
Ph: (334) 844-2500<br />
Fax: (334) 844-2583<br />
mises.org<br />
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1<br />
ISBN: 978-1-933550-79-4
e <strong>entrepreneur</strong> hires the technicians, i.e., people who have the<br />
ability <strong>and</strong> the skill to perform definite kinds <strong>and</strong> quantities of<br />
work. e class of technicians includes the great inventors, the<br />
champions in the field of applied science, the constructors <strong>and</strong><br />
designers as well as the performers of the most simple tasks. e<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong> joins their ranks as far as he himself takes part in the<br />
technical execution of his <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial plans. e technician<br />
contributes his own toil <strong>and</strong> trouble; but it is the <strong>entrepreneur</strong><br />
qua <strong>entrepreneur</strong> who directs his labor toward definite goals. And<br />
the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> himself acts as a m<strong>and</strong>atary, as it were, of the<br />
consumers.<br />
—Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (1949), p. 300
Contents<br />
Foreword by Doug French<br />
Introduction<br />
iii<br />
vii<br />
1 Economic Calculation <strong>and</strong> the Limits of Organization 1<br />
e Textbook eory of the Firm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3<br />
Coase <strong>and</strong> Transaction Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4<br />
Economic Calculation <strong>and</strong> the Limits to Firm Size . . . . . . . 5<br />
Alternative Austrian Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18<br />
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21<br />
2 Entrepreneurship <strong>and</strong> Corporate Governance 23<br />
Limits of the St<strong>and</strong>ard Approach to the Firm . . . . . . . . . 24<br />
Two Alternative Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25<br />
e Contractual Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27<br />
Building Blocks of an Austrian eory of the Firm . . . . . . . 28<br />
Capital Markets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35<br />
Toward an Austrian eory of Corporate Governance . . . . . 37<br />
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48<br />
3 Do Entrepreneurs Make Predictable Mistakes? 49<br />
Entrepreneurship, Profit, <strong>and</strong> Loss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54<br />
Mergers, Sell-offs, <strong>and</strong> Efficiency: eory <strong>and</strong> Evidence . . . . 57<br />
i
ii<br />
<br />
Are Divestitures Predictable? Evidence from a Duration Study . 60<br />
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65<br />
4 e Entrepreneurial Organization of Heterogeneous Capital 67<br />
Entrepreneurship, Judgment, <strong>and</strong> Asset Ownership . . . . . . 69<br />
Capital eory <strong>and</strong> the eory of the Firm . . . . . . . . . . 71<br />
e Attributes Approach to Capital Heterogeneity . . . . . . . 75<br />
Organizing Heterogeneous Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80<br />
Concluding Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87<br />
5 Opportunity Discovery <strong>and</strong> Entrepreneurial Action 93<br />
Entrepreneurship: Occupational, Structural, <strong>and</strong> Functional<br />
Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95<br />
Entrepreneurship as Opportunity Identification . . . . . . . . 99<br />
Entrepreneurial Action, Heterogeneous Capital, <strong>and</strong> Economic<br />
Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109<br />
Applications of Entrepreneurial Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113<br />
Summary <strong>and</strong> Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116<br />
6 Risk, Uncertainty, <strong>and</strong> Economic Organization 117<br />
Knight, Mises, <strong>and</strong> Mises on Probability . . . . . . . . . . . . 118<br />
Uncertainty <strong>and</strong> the Entrepreneur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121<br />
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124<br />
7 Price eory <strong>and</strong> Austrian Economics 125<br />
Central emes of Austrian Economics Before 1974 . . . . . . 129<br />
Equilibrium in Austrian Price eory . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135<br />
Knowledge, Expectations, <strong>and</strong> the Convergence to Equilibrium 139<br />
A New Way Forward for Austrian Economics: Developing Austrian<br />
Price eory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150<br />
8 Commentary 153<br />
A Government Did Invent the Internet, But the Market Made<br />
it Glorious . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153<br />
B Networks, Social Production, <strong>and</strong> Private Property . . . . . 157<br />
C Why Intellectuals Still Support Socialism . . . . . . . . . . 162<br />
D Management eory <strong>and</strong> the Business Cycle . . . . . . . . 169<br />
E Menger the Revolutionary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171<br />
F Hayek the Innovator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175<br />
G Williamson <strong>and</strong> the Austrians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Foreword<br />
by Doug French<br />
Entrepreneurship has been a hot buzzword recently. Classes in <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship<br />
are being taught at both the high school <strong>and</strong> college levels.<br />
e Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation: e Foundation of Entrepreneurship<br />
has big fancy websites advertising that its President <strong>and</strong> CEO<br />
will give a “State of Entrepreneurship Address.” ere are global <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship<br />
conferences being held in far-flung places like Dubai. Learning<br />
programs are offered to test your “Entrepreneurial IQ.” e United States<br />
government even has an <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship website, advertising a Presidential<br />
Summit on Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Law, <strong>and</strong> a Global<br />
Entrepreneurship Week.<br />
Is it that simple? If more classes, websites <strong>and</strong> conferences are offered<br />
will we really have more Ewing Kauffmans? A man who as a child was<br />
bedridden for a year with a heart ailment but used the time to read 40<br />
books per month. After WWII he worked as a pharmaceutical salesman<br />
until, with a $5,000 investment, he started Marion Laboratories. Company<br />
sales were just $39,000 in the first year of operation but four decades<br />
later Kauffman’s company would have revenues totaling $930 million.<br />
In 1989, Kauffman merged Marion with Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals,<br />
making more than 300 millionaires of Marion investors <strong>and</strong> employees.<br />
Kauffman himself would likely have not stepped into the role of <strong>entrepreneur</strong><br />
if not for the stupidity of his employer, Lincoln Laboratories.<br />
A natural salesman <strong>and</strong> hard worker, Kauffman in just his second year<br />
earned more in commissions than the company president did in salary. In<br />
iii
iv<br />
<br />
response, the president cut Kauffman’s commissions. Despite the reduction,<br />
Kauffman still out-earned the Lincoln head man the following year,<br />
so “he took away some of my territory, which was the same as taking away<br />
some of my income,” Kauffman related later. “So, I quit <strong>and</strong> I started<br />
Marion Laboratories in the basement of my home.”<br />
e government can talk about <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship <strong>and</strong> act like it is<br />
promoting it, but all of what government does by taxing <strong>and</strong> regulating<br />
impedes the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>. It’s hard to imagine that even Ewing Kauffman<br />
could make a similar initial investment today (roughly $44,000 adjusted<br />
for inflation), start a firm in his basement, <strong>and</strong> build it to a billion dollar<br />
company. e local authorities in Kansas City were not all that concerned<br />
about a fledgling pharmaceutical company operating from Kauffman’s<br />
home in 1950. Today, there would be permits to obtain, approvals<br />
to be gained <strong>and</strong> license fees to pay. e majority of the legislation that<br />
has given the Food <strong>and</strong> Drug Administration (FDA) its enormous power<br />
was enacted after Kauffman’s company was up <strong>and</strong> running.<br />
But as long as there is some shred of a market available, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s<br />
find a way. ey see opportunity others don’t. ey take financial risks<br />
that most people would consider unfathomable. e government edicts,<br />
bureaucratic roadblocks <strong>and</strong> oppressive taxation that discourage the hardiest<br />
of souls only serve to challenge <strong>and</strong> inspire creative <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s while<br />
weeding out potential competitors. All of the wonderful goods <strong>and</strong> services<br />
that we enjoy are due to <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship <strong>and</strong> the firms that are created to<br />
carry out the dreams of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> <strong>and</strong> serve customers.<br />
It is the firm where most people work. Maybe its a small firm or a<br />
big one or one in-between, but unless one is a solo contractor most people<br />
trade their time <strong>and</strong> talent for a paycheck to pay the bills. e vast majority<br />
of working people don’t give much thought to this framework. ey clock<br />
in, they clock out. Payday every couple of weeks. At the same time most<br />
people will spend the majority of their non-sleeping hours on the job,<br />
working for a firm or series of different firms. And work life maybe the<br />
single most important part of a person’s life. Reportedly 95% of the people<br />
who are happy on the job are happy with their life as a whole. But salaried<br />
workers, from the lowest paid to the highest, take no risk. And although<br />
they are critical to the production of products <strong>and</strong> services, they are a cost<br />
of doing business.
v<br />
Conversely, the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> is only paid when the market accepts his<br />
or her product. If the market rejects the product, the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> is not<br />
only not rewarded, but most times will lose capital that had been saved<br />
previously <strong>and</strong> was invested in the idea <strong>and</strong> production. As Kauffman<br />
explained, “e odds were strongly against me when I started. ere were<br />
two or three thous<strong>and</strong> pharmaceutical businesses started after World War<br />
II, <strong>and</strong> only three ever really succeeded.”<br />
As vital as <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship <strong>and</strong> the firm are to the working of the<br />
market <strong>and</strong> lives of virtually all working men <strong>and</strong> women, most schools<br />
of economic thought are silent on the subject. Even the work that has<br />
been done is incomplete <strong>and</strong> contradictory. Economists can’t even agree<br />
on what <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship is or what exactly <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s like the late<br />
Ewing Kauffman do. And the apparatus that facilitates the manifestation<br />
of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial vision—the firm—is but a “black box” where inputs<br />
enter <strong>and</strong> outputs emerge, like so much magic.<br />
But like so many market phenomena that modern economics chooses<br />
to ignore or get wrong, an Austrian economist has entered the black box,<br />
examining its contents for a better underst<strong>and</strong>ing of not only what <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s<br />
are, but what they do <strong>and</strong> why they do it. Peter G. Klein has<br />
devoted his entire career to underst<strong>and</strong>ing the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> <strong>and</strong> the firm,<br />
bringing a distinctive Austrian approach to the problem while drawing<br />
from what all schools of thought have to contribute.<br />
is book contains the fruit of Dr. Klein’s labors. And while the majority<br />
of the book was taken from articles appearing in academic journals, this<br />
book should not only be read by students <strong>and</strong> academics. Klein provides<br />
valuable insight that business owners <strong>and</strong> managers will find useful. As<br />
heroic as the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> may appear or thoughtful as the manager may<br />
seem, they don’t operate in a vacuum. Often they have no one to talk to<br />
<strong>and</strong> nothing to keep them in check but their own egos, which in many<br />
cases offers no check at all but the opposite.<br />
e yearning for knowledge in this area is considerable. Considerable<br />
space at most any bookstore is provided for the many <strong>and</strong> varied management<br />
books. ere are nearly as many different management books offered<br />
as diet books, with each genre being as faddish as the next. Management<br />
theorists crank out a continual stream of books full of business advice that<br />
“readers find unreadable,” writes e Economist’s Adrian Wooldridge, “<strong>and</strong><br />
managers find unmanageable.”
vi<br />
<br />
While many great <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s cash in by writing books about their<br />
management secrets <strong>and</strong> <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial exploits, their supposedly keen<br />
insights are often weathered by time <strong>and</strong> selective memory. But most importantly,<br />
these books imply that capital is homogeneous, that the wouldbe<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong> can do what Jack Welch did, or emulate T. Boone Pickens,<br />
or apply Ewing Kauffman’s strategies <strong>and</strong> expect the same result. ese<br />
kind of books are good for inspiration but nothing more.<br />
As Klein makes abundantly clear, capital is instead heterogeneous.<br />
Entrepreneurship can’t be formulated in equations <strong>and</strong> sprinkled like pixie<br />
dust on the masses by government initiatives or well-meaning foundations<br />
with the hopes that the inner-<strong>entrepreneur</strong> in every citizen will be<br />
summoned. Although the brilliant Mr. Kauffman supported the use of<br />
his accumulated wealth to support programs promoting <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship,<br />
such programs are often a malinvestment of capital. And the use of taxpayer<br />
dollars towards such an endeavor is doubly wasteful.<br />
It is however vital that we underst<strong>and</strong> the function of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong><br />
<strong>and</strong> the process that is so critical to the advancement of society <strong>and</strong> wellbeing<br />
of its members. As Klein pries open the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial black box,<br />
the glories <strong>and</strong> special talents of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> are exposed, along with<br />
the limitations of the firm. e market environment that allows <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s<br />
to thrive is revealed. It is not that the society requires multitudes<br />
of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s, but only that those with this rare talent be allowed to<br />
flourish unfettered. And for those readers who work for an agreed-upon<br />
wage helping some <strong>entrepreneur</strong> become wealthy, an appreciation is gained<br />
with the realization that ultimately it is only by satisfying customers that<br />
their <strong>entrepreneur</strong> bosses become successful.
Introduction<br />
As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be an Austrian economist.<br />
Well, not quite, but I was exposed to Austrian economics early on. I<br />
grew up in a fairly normal middle-class household, with parents who were<br />
New Deal Democrats. In high school, a friend urged me to read Ayn<br />
R<strong>and</strong>, <strong>and</strong> I was captivated by her novels. I went on to read some of<br />
her nonfiction works, in which she recommended books by Ludwig von<br />
Mises <strong>and</strong> Henry Hazlitt. I don’t remember which economics books<br />
I read first, maybe Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson or Mises’s Anti-<br />
Capitalistic Mentality. I didn’t underst<strong>and</strong> the more technical parts of their<br />
analyses, but I was impressed with their clear writing, logical exposition,<br />
<strong>and</strong> embrace of liberty <strong>and</strong> personal responsibility. I took a few economics<br />
courses in college <strong>and</strong>, while they lacked any Austrian content, I enjoyed<br />
them <strong>and</strong> decided to major in the subject. I had a very good professor,<br />
William Darity, who himself preferred Marx <strong>and</strong> Keynes to Mises but who<br />
appreciated my intellectual curiosity <strong>and</strong> encouraged my growing interest<br />
in the Austrians.<br />
As a college senior, I was thinking about graduate school—possibly in<br />
economics. By pure chance, my father saw a poster on a bulletin board<br />
advertising graduate-school fellowships from the Ludwig von Mises Institute.<br />
(Younger readers: this was an actual, physical bulletin board, with a<br />
piece of paper attached; this was in the dark days before the Internet.) I<br />
was flabbergasted; someone had named an institute after Mises? I applied<br />
for a fellowship, received a nice letter from the president, Lew Rockwell,<br />
<strong>and</strong> eventually had a telephone interview with the fellowship committee,<br />
which consisted of Murray Rothbard. You can imagine how nervous I was<br />
vii
viii<br />
<br />
the day of that phone call! But Rothbard was friendly <strong>and</strong> engaging, his<br />
legendary charisma coming across even over the phone, <strong>and</strong> he quickly put<br />
me at ease. (I also applied for admission to New York University’s graduate<br />
program in economics, which got me a phone call from Israel Kirzner. Talk<br />
about the proverbial kid in the c<strong>and</strong>y store!) I won the Mises fellowship,<br />
<strong>and</strong> eventually enrolled in the economics PhD program at the University<br />
of California, Berkeley, which I started in 1988.<br />
Before my first summer of graduate school, I was privileged to attend<br />
the “Mises University,” then called the “Advanced Instructional Program<br />
in Austrian Economics,” a week-long program of lectures <strong>and</strong> discussions<br />
held that year at Stanford University <strong>and</strong> led by Rothbard, Hans-Hermann<br />
Hoppe, Roger Garrison, <strong>and</strong> David Gordon. Meeting Rothbard <strong>and</strong> his<br />
colleagues was a transformational experience. ey were brilliant, energetic,<br />
enthusiastic, <strong>and</strong> optimistic. Graduate school was no cake walk—the<br />
required core courses in (mathematical) economic theory <strong>and</strong> statistics<br />
drove many students to the brink of despair, <strong>and</strong> some of them doubtless<br />
have nervous twitches to this day—but the knowledge that I was part<br />
of a larger movement, a scholarly community devoted to the Austrian<br />
approach, kept me going through the darker hours.<br />
In my second year of graduate school, I took a course from the 2009<br />
Nobel Laureate Oliver Williamson, “Economics of Institutions.” Williamson’s<br />
course was a revelation, the first course at Berkeley I really enjoyed.<br />
e syllabus was dazzling, with readings from Ronald Coase, Herbert Simon,<br />
F. A. Hayek, Douglass North, Kenneth Arrow, Alfred Ch<strong>and</strong>ler,<br />
Armen Alchian, Harold Demsetz, Benjamin Klein, <strong>and</strong> other brilliant<br />
<strong>and</strong> thoughtful economists, along with sociologists, political scientists,<br />
historians, <strong>and</strong> others. I decided then that institutions <strong>and</strong> organizations<br />
would be my area, <strong>and</strong> I’ve never looked back.<br />
e essays collected in this volume reflect my efforts to underst<strong>and</strong><br />
the economics of organization, to combine the insights of Williamson’s<br />
“transaction cost” approach to the firm with Austrian ideas about property,<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, money, economic calculation, the time-structure<br />
of production, <strong>and</strong> government intervention. Austrian economics, I am<br />
convinced, has important implications for the theory of the firm, including<br />
firm boundaries, diversification, corporate governance, <strong>and</strong> <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship,<br />
the areas in which I have done most of my academic work. Austrian<br />
economists have not, however, devoted substantial attention to the
ix<br />
theory of the firm, preferring to focus on business-cycle theory, welfare<br />
economics, political economy, comparative economic systems, <strong>and</strong> other<br />
areas. Until recently, the theory of the firm was an almost completely<br />
neglected area in Austrian economics, but over the last decade, a small Austrian<br />
literature on the firm has emerged. While these works cover a wide<br />
variety of theoretical <strong>and</strong> applied topics, their authors share the view that<br />
Austrian insights have something to offer students of firm organization.<br />
e essays in this volume, originally published between 1996 <strong>and</strong><br />
2009, deal with firms, contracts, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s—in short, with the economics<br />
<strong>and</strong> management of organizations <strong>and</strong> markets. Chapter 1, “Economic<br />
Calculation <strong>and</strong> the Limits of Organization,” first presented in<br />
Williamson’s Institutional Economics Workshop in 1994, shows how<br />
the economic calculation problem identified by Mises (1920) helps underst<strong>and</strong><br />
the limits to firm size, an argument first offered by Rothbard<br />
(1962). It also offers a summary of the socialist calculation debate that has<br />
worked well, for me, in the classroom. Along with chapter 2, “Entrepreneurship<br />
<strong>and</strong> Corporate Governance,” it offers an outline of an Austrian<br />
theory of the firm, based on the Misesian concept of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship<br />
<strong>and</strong> the role of monetary calculation as the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>’s essential tool.<br />
“Entrepreneurship <strong>and</strong> Corporate Governance” also suggests four areas<br />
for Austrian research in corporate governance: firms as investments, internal<br />
capital markets, comparative corporate governance, <strong>and</strong> financiers as<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s. Chapter 3, “Do Entrepreneurs Make Predictable Mistakes”<br />
(with S<strong>and</strong>ra Klein), applies this framework to the problem of corporate<br />
divestitures.<br />
Chapter 4, “e Entrepreneurial Organization of Heterogeneous Capital”<br />
(with Kirsten Foss, Nicolai Foss, <strong>and</strong> S<strong>and</strong>ra Klein), shows how<br />
Austrian capital theory provides further insight into the firm’s existence,<br />
boundaries, <strong>and</strong> internal organization. e Austrian idea that resources<br />
are heterogeneous, that capital goods have what Lachmann (1956) called<br />
“multiple specificities,” is hardly surprising to specialists in strategic management,<br />
a literature that abounds with notions of unique “resources,”<br />
“competencies,” “capabilities,” “assets,” <strong>and</strong> the like. But modern theories<br />
of economic organization are not built on a unified theory of capital<br />
heterogeneity, simply invoking ad hoc specificities when necessary. e<br />
Misesian concept of the capital-owning <strong>entrepreneur</strong>, seeking to arrange<br />
his unique resources into value-adding combinations, helps illuminate
x<br />
<br />
several puzzles of firm organization.<br />
Management scholars, <strong>and</strong> some economists, are familiar with Israel<br />
Kirzner’s concept of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship as “discovery,” or “alertness” to<br />
profit opportunities, typically seeing it as “the” Austrian approach of<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship. Kirzner, Mises’s student at NYU, has always described<br />
his approach to <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship as a logical extension of Mises’s ideas.<br />
However, as I argue in chapter 5, “Opportunity Discovery <strong>and</strong> Entrepreneurial<br />
Action,” one can interpret Mises differently. Indeed, I see<br />
Mises’s approach to the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> as closer to Frank Knight’s (1921),<br />
a view that makes asset ownership, <strong>and</strong> the investment of resources under<br />
uncertainty, the hallmark of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial behavior. is suggests a<br />
focus not on opportunities, the subjective visions of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s, but<br />
on investment—on actions, in other words, not beliefs. I suggest several<br />
implications of this approach for applied <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship research. Chapter<br />
6, “Risk, Uncertainty, <strong>and</strong> Economic Organization,” written for the<br />
Hoppe Festschrift (Hülsmann <strong>and</strong> Kinsella, 2009), further discusses the<br />
Knightian distinction between “risk” <strong>and</strong> “uncertainty,” or what Mises<br />
called “class probability” <strong>and</strong> “case probability.”<br />
Chapter 7, “Price eory <strong>and</strong> Austrian Economics,” challenges what<br />
I see as the dominant underst<strong>and</strong>ing of the Austrian tradition, particularly<br />
in applied fields like organization <strong>and</strong> strategy. Scholars both<br />
inside <strong>and</strong> outside economics tend to identify the Austrian school with<br />
Hayek’s ideas about dispersed, tacit knowledge, Kirzner’s theory of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
discovery, <strong>and</strong> an emphasis on time, subjectivity, process, <strong>and</strong><br />
disequilibrium. Despite renewed interest in the Mengerian tradition,<br />
the Austrian approach to “basic” economic analysis—value, production,<br />
exchange, price, money, capital, <strong>and</strong> intervention—hasn’t gotten much<br />
attention at all. Indeed, it’s widely believed that the Austrian approach<br />
to mundane topics such as factor productivity, the substitution effect of<br />
a price change, the effects of rent control or the minimum wage, etc., is<br />
basically the same as the mainstream approach, just without math or with<br />
a few buzzwords about“subjectivism” or the “market process” thrown in.<br />
Even many contemporary Austrians appear to hold this view. Chapter 7<br />
suggests instead that the Austrians offer a distinct <strong>and</strong> valuable approach to<br />
basic economic questions, an approach that should be central to research<br />
by Austrians on theoretical <strong>and</strong> applied topics in economics <strong>and</strong> business<br />
administration.
xi<br />
A final chapter, “Commentary,” collects some shorter essays on the<br />
nature <strong>and</strong> history of the Internet, the role of the intellectuals in society,<br />
the relationship between management theory <strong>and</strong> the business cycle,<br />
biographical sketches of Carl Menger <strong>and</strong> F. A. Hayek, <strong>and</strong> a note on<br />
Williamson’s contributions <strong>and</strong> his relationship to the Austrian tradition.<br />
Some of these first appeared as Daily Articles at Mises.org <strong>and</strong> were written<br />
for a nonspecialist audience. Indeed, I think scholars in every field,<br />
particularly in economics <strong>and</strong> business administration, have an obligation<br />
to write for the general public, <strong>and</strong> not only for their fellow specialists.<br />
Ideas have consequences, as Richard Weaver put it, <strong>and</strong> economic ideas<br />
are particularly important.<br />
In preparing these essays for publication in book form I have made<br />
only light revisions in the text, correcting minor errors, eliminating some<br />
redundant material, <strong>and</strong> updating a few references. I think they work well<br />
together, <strong>and</strong> I hope readers will see the end result as an integrated whole,<br />
not simply a collection of “greatest hits.”<br />
I’ve been greatly influenced <strong>and</strong> helped by many friends, teachers, colleagues,<br />
<strong>and</strong> students, far too many to list here. ree people deserve special<br />
mention, however. From my father, Milton M. Klein, a historian who<br />
taught at Columbia University, Long Isl<strong>and</strong> University, SUNY–Fredonia,<br />
New York University, <strong>and</strong> the University of Tennessee, I learned the craft<br />
<strong>and</strong> discipline of scholarship. He taught me to read critically, to think <strong>and</strong><br />
write clearly, to take ideas seriously. Murray Rothbard, the great libertarian<br />
polymath whose life <strong>and</strong> work played such a critical role in the modern<br />
Austrian revival, dazzled me with his scholarship, his energy, <strong>and</strong> his sense<br />
of life. Rothbard is widely recognized as a great libertarian theorist, but his<br />
technical contributions to Austrian economics are not always appreciated,<br />
even in Austrian circles. In my view he is one of the most important<br />
contributors to the “mundane” Austrian analysis described above. Oliver<br />
Williamson, who supervised my PhD dissertation at Berkeley, is my most<br />
important direct mentor <strong>and</strong> a constant source of inspiration. Williamson<br />
is no Austrian, but he appreciated <strong>and</strong> supported my interest in the Austrian<br />
school <strong>and</strong> encouraged me to pursue my intellectual passions, not to<br />
follow the crowd. His encouragement <strong>and</strong> support have been critical to<br />
my development as a scholar.<br />
I’m deeply grateful to the Contracting <strong>and</strong> Organizations Research<br />
Institute, the University of Missouri’s Division of Applied Social Sciences,
xii<br />
<br />
the University of Missouri Research Foundation, the Coase Foundation,<br />
the Kauffman Foundation, <strong>and</strong>, above all, the Mises Institute for generous<br />
financial <strong>and</strong> moral support over the years. I’ve learned so much from my<br />
university colleagues, coauthors, fellow bloggers, conference participants,<br />
<strong>and</strong> other members of the Academic Racket that it would be impossible<br />
to name all those who’ve influenced my work. My frequent coauthor<br />
Nicolai Foss, who thinks <strong>and</strong> writes more quickly than I can listen<br />
or read, keeps me on my toes. I’ve learned much about Austrian economics,<br />
firm strategy, economic organization, <strong>and</strong> a host of other topics<br />
from Joseph Salerno, Lasse Lien, Joseph Mahoney, Dick Langlois, Michael<br />
Cook, Michael Sykuta, <strong>and</strong> many others. Others who offered specific<br />
comments <strong>and</strong> suggestions on earlier versions of these chapters include<br />
Sharon Alvarez, Jay Barney, R<strong>and</strong>y Beard, Don Boudreaux, Per Bylund,<br />
John Chapman, Todd Chiles, Jerry Ellig, David Gordon, Jeff Herbener,<br />
Stavros Ioannides, Dan Klein, Mario Mondelli, Jennie Raymond, David<br />
Robinson, Fabio Rojas, Ron Sanchez, Ivo Sarjanovic, Narin Smith, Sid<br />
Winter, <strong>and</strong> Ulrich Witt. My colleagues have also tried to teach me about<br />
deadlines, but I’m still working on that one. I agree with Douglas Adams,<br />
“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”<br />
Special thanks go to Doug French for suggesting this project <strong>and</strong> to<br />
Jeff Tucker, Arlene Oost-Zinner, Paul Foley, <strong>and</strong> Per Bylund for seeing it<br />
to fruition. Most important, I thank my wife S<strong>and</strong>y <strong>and</strong> my children for<br />
putting up with my frequent absences, endless hours in front of a computer<br />
screen, <strong>and</strong> occasional irritability. ey are my greatest inspiration.<br />
Peter G. Klein<br />
Columbia, Missouri<br />
March 2010
CHAPTER 1<br />
Economic Calculation <strong>and</strong> the Limits of<br />
Organization †<br />
Economists have become increasingly frustrated with the textbook model<br />
of the firm. e “firm” of intermediate microeconomics is a production<br />
function, a mysterious “black box” whose insides are off-limits to<br />
respectable economic theory (relegated instead to the lesser disciplines of<br />
management, organization theory, industrial psychology, <strong>and</strong> the like).<br />
ough useful in certain contexts, the textbook model has proven unable<br />
to account for a variety of real-world business practices: vertical <strong>and</strong> lateral<br />
integration, geographic <strong>and</strong> product-line diversification, franchising, longterm<br />
commercial contracting, transfer pricing, research joint ventures, <strong>and</strong><br />
many others. As an alternative to viewing the firm as a production function,<br />
economists are turning to a new body of literature that views the<br />
firm as an organization, itself worthy of economic analysis. is emerging<br />
literature is the best-developed part of what has come to be called the<br />
“new institutional economics. 1 e new perspective has deeply enhanced<br />
† Published originally in Review of Austrian Economics 9, no. 2 (1996): 51–77.<br />
1 For overviews of the new institutional economics <strong>and</strong> the theory of the firm, see Coase<br />
(1991); Holmström <strong>and</strong> Tirole (1989); Langlois (1994b); Furubotn <strong>and</strong> Richter (1997);<br />
Williamson (2000); Ménard <strong>and</strong> Shirley (2005), <strong>and</strong> Brousseau <strong>and</strong> Glachant (2008). For<br />
surveys of related empirical work see Shelanski <strong>and</strong> Klein (1995); Klein (2005), <strong>and</strong> Macher<br />
<strong>and</strong> Richman (2008).<br />
1
2 <br />
<strong>and</strong> enriched our underst<strong>and</strong>ing of firms <strong>and</strong> other organizations, such<br />
that we can no longer agree with Ronald Coase’s 1988 statement that<br />
“[w]hy firms exist, what determines the number of firms, what determines<br />
what firms do . . . are not questions of interest to most economists”<br />
(Coase, 1988, p. 5). e new theory is not without its critics; Richard<br />
Nelson (1991), for example, objects that the new institutional economics<br />
tends to downplay discretionary differences among firms. Still, the new<br />
institutional economics—in particular, agency theory <strong>and</strong> transaction cost<br />
economics—has been the subject of increasing attention in industrial organization,<br />
corporate finance, strategic management, <strong>and</strong> business history. 2<br />
is chapter highlights some distinctive Austrian contributions to the<br />
theory of the firm, contributions that have been largely neglected, both<br />
inside <strong>and</strong> outside the Austrian literature. In particular, I argue that Mises’s<br />
concept of economic calculation—the means by which <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s adjust<br />
the structure of production to accord with consumer wants—belongs<br />
at the forefront of Austrian research into the nature <strong>and</strong> design of organizations.<br />
ere is a unique Austrian perspective on economic planning,<br />
a perspective developed over the course of the socialist calculation<br />
debate. As was recognized in the early Austrian reinterpretations of the<br />
calculation debate (Lavoie, 1985; Kirzner, 1988a), Mises’s conception of<br />
the problem faced by socialist planners is part <strong>and</strong> parcel of his underst<strong>and</strong>ing<br />
of how resources are allocated in a market system. Mises himself<br />
emphasized that planning is ubiquitous: “[E]very human action means<br />
planning. What those calling themselves planners advocate is not the<br />
substitution of planned action for letting things go. It is the substitution<br />
of the planner’s own plan for the plans of his fellow men” (Mises, 1947,<br />
p. 493). All organizations plan, <strong>and</strong> all organizations, public <strong>and</strong> private,<br />
perform economic calculation. In this sense, the calculation problem is<br />
much more general than has usually been realized.<br />
With their unique perspective on markets <strong>and</strong> the difficulties of resource<br />
allocation under central planning, third- <strong>and</strong> fourth-generation<br />
Austrian economists have always implicitly understood the economics<br />
of organization. In this context, as Nicolai Juul Foss (1994a, p. 32)<br />
2 e framework of transaction cost economics has already made it into textbook<br />
form: Kreps (1990b, pp. 744–90), Rubin (1990), Milgrom <strong>and</strong> Roberts (1992), Acs <strong>and</strong><br />
Gerlowski (1996), Brickley, Smith, <strong>and</strong> Zimmerman (1997), <strong>and</strong> Besanko, Dranove, <strong>and</strong><br />
Shanley (1998).
3<br />
notes, “it is something of a doctrinal puzzle that the Austrians have never<br />
formulated a theory of the firm.” Foss points out that many elements<br />
of the modern theory of the firm—property rights, relationship-specific<br />
assets, asymmetric information, the principal–agent problem—appeared,<br />
at least in elementary form, in Austrian writings since the middle stages<br />
of the calculation debate. Indeed, Rothbard’s treatment of firm size<br />
in Man, Economy, <strong>and</strong> State (1962) was among the first discussions to<br />
adopt explicitly the framework proposed by Ronald Coase in 1937, a<br />
framework that underlies most contemporary theorizing about the firm.<br />
Mises’s discussion in Human Action (1949) of the role of the financial<br />
markets foreshadows Henry Manne’s seminal 1965 article on the market<br />
for corporate control along with the recent recognition of finance as an<br />
essential part of economics.<br />
Besides anticipating parts of the modern literature, Mises <strong>and</strong> Rothbard<br />
also introduced significant innovations, though this has not yet been<br />
generally recognized. eir contributions, while not part of a fully articulated,<br />
explicit theory of the firm, deserve attention <strong>and</strong> development, especially<br />
by those working on such issues from within the Austrian School. 3<br />
ese contributions are Rothbard’s application of the calculation problem<br />
to the limits of the firm, <strong>and</strong> Mises’s discussion of how the financial markets<br />
both limit managerial discretion <strong>and</strong> perform the ultimate resource<br />
allocation task in a market economy.<br />
The Textbook Theory of the Firm<br />
In neoclassical economic theory, the firm as such does not exist at all. e<br />
“firm” is a production function or production possibilities set, a means of<br />
transforming inputs into outputs. Given the available technology, a vector<br />
of input prices, <strong>and</strong> a dem<strong>and</strong> schedule, the firm maximizes money profits<br />
subject to the constraint that its production plans must be technologically<br />
feasible. at is all there is to it. e firm is modeled as a single actor,<br />
facing a series of relatively uncomplicated decisions: what level of output<br />
to produce, how much of each factor to hire, <strong>and</strong> so on. ese “decisions,”<br />
of course, are not really decisions at all; they are trivial mathematical calculations,<br />
implicit in the underlying data. In the long run, the firm may also<br />
3 Foss <strong>and</strong> Klein (2010) summarize some of this literature.
4 <br />
choose an optimal size <strong>and</strong> output mix, but even these are determined by<br />
the characteristics of the production function (economies of scale, scope,<br />
<strong>and</strong> sequence). In short: the firm is a set of cost curves, <strong>and</strong> the “theory of<br />
the firm” is a calculus problem.<br />
To be sure, these models are not advertised as realistic descriptions of<br />
actual business firms; their use is purely instrumental. As David Kreps<br />
(1990b, p. 233)—himself much less sanguine about the merits of the traditional<br />
model than most—puts it: if real-world firms do not maximize<br />
profits as the traditional theory holds, “that doesn’t mean that profit maximization<br />
isn’t a good positive model. Only the data can speak to that,<br />
<strong>and</strong> then only after we see the implications of profit maximization for<br />
observable behavior.” However, even granting instrumentalism its somewhat<br />
dubious merits, 4 the production-function approach is unsatisfactory,<br />
because it isn’t useful for underst<strong>and</strong>ing a variety of economic phenomena.<br />
e black-box model is really a theory about a plant or production process,<br />
not about a firm. A single firm can own <strong>and</strong> operate multiple production<br />
processes. Similarly, two or more firms can contract to operate jointly a<br />
single production process (as in a research joint venture). If we want to<br />
underst<strong>and</strong> the scale <strong>and</strong> scope of the firm as a legal entity, then, we must<br />
look beyond the textbook model.<br />
Coase <strong>and</strong> Transaction Costs<br />
Ronald Coase, in his celebrated 1937 paper on “e Nature of the Firm,”<br />
was the first to explain that the boundaries of the organization depend not<br />
only on the productive technology, but on the costs of transacting business.<br />
In the Coasian framework, as developed <strong>and</strong> exp<strong>and</strong>ed by Williamson<br />
(1975, 1985, 1996), Klein, Crawford, <strong>and</strong> Alchian (1978), <strong>and</strong> Grossman<br />
<strong>and</strong> Hart (1986), the decision to organize transactions within the firm as<br />
opposed to on the open market—the “make or buy decision”—depends on<br />
the relative costs of internal versus external exchange. e market mechanism<br />
entails certain costs: discovering the relevant prices, negotiating <strong>and</strong><br />
4 For critiques of instrumentalism see Rizzo (1978) <strong>and</strong> Batemarco (1985). For references<br />
to the interpretative literature on Milton Friedman’s 1953 essay on “positive economics”—the<br />
source of most economists’ views on method—see Bol<strong>and</strong> (1979), Caldwell<br />
(1980), <strong>and</strong> Musgrave (1981); all reprinted in Caldwell (1984) along with De Marchi<br />
(1988).
5<br />
enforcing contracts, <strong>and</strong> so on. Within the firm, the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> may<br />
be able to reduce these “transaction costs” by coordinating these activities<br />
himself. However, internal organization brings another kind of transaction<br />
cost, namely problems of information flows, incentives, monitoring, <strong>and</strong><br />
performance evaluation. e boundary of the firm, then, is determined<br />
by the tradeoff, at the margin, between the relative transaction costs of<br />
external <strong>and</strong> internal exchange. In this sense, firm boundaries depend not<br />
only on technology, but on organizational considerations; that is, on the<br />
costs <strong>and</strong> benefits of contracting.<br />
e relative costs of external <strong>and</strong> internal exchange depend on particular<br />
characteristics of transaction: the degree to which relationship-specific<br />
assets are involved, the amount of uncertainty about the future <strong>and</strong> about<br />
trading partners’ actions, the complexity of the trading arrangement, <strong>and</strong><br />
the frequency with which the transaction occurs. Each matters in determining<br />
the preferred institutional arrangement (that is, internal versus<br />
external production), although the first—“asset specificity”—is held to<br />
be particularly important. Williamson (1985, p. 55) defines asset specificity<br />
as “durable investments that are undertaken in support of particular<br />
transactions, the opportunity cost of which investments are much lower in<br />
best alternative uses or by alternative users should the original transaction<br />
be prematurely terminated.” is could describe a variety of relationshipspecific<br />
investments, including both specialized physical <strong>and</strong> human capital,<br />
along with intangibles such as R&D <strong>and</strong> firm-specific knowledge or<br />
capabilities.<br />
Economic Calculation <strong>and</strong> the Limits to Firm Size<br />
Unfortunately, the growing economics literature on the theory of the firm<br />
focuses mostly on the costs of market exchange, <strong>and</strong> much less on the<br />
costs of governing internal exchange. e new research has yet to produce<br />
a fully satisfactory explanation of the limits to firm size (Williamson, 1985,<br />
chap. 6). In Coase’s words, “Why does the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> not organize one<br />
less transaction or one more?” Or, more generally, “Why is not all production<br />
carried on in one big firm?” (Coase, 1937, pp. 393–94). e theory of<br />
the limits to the firm is perhaps the most difficult <strong>and</strong> least well developed<br />
part of the new economics of organization. Existing contractual explanations<br />
rely on problems of authority <strong>and</strong> responsibility (Arrow, 1974);
6 <br />
incentive distortions caused by residual ownership rights (Grossman <strong>and</strong><br />
Hart, 1986; Hart <strong>and</strong> Moore, 1990; Hart, 1995); <strong>and</strong> the costs of attempting<br />
to reproduce market governance features within the firm (Williamson,<br />
1985, chap. 6). It is here that Austrian theory has an obvious contribution<br />
to make, by applying Mises’s theorem on the impossibility of economic<br />
calculation under socialism. Rothbard has shown how the need for monetary<br />
calculation in terms of actual prices not only explains the failures of<br />
central planning under socialism, but places an upper bound on firm size.<br />
The Socialist Calculation Debate: A Brief Review<br />
To underst<strong>and</strong> Mises’s position in the calculation debate, one must realize<br />
that his argument is not exclusively, or even primarily, about socialism. It<br />
is about the role of prices for capital goods. Entrepreneurs make decisions<br />
about resource allocation based on their expectations about future prices,<br />
<strong>and</strong> the information contained in present prices. To make profits, they<br />
need information about all prices, not only the prices of consumer goods<br />
but the prices of factors of production. Without markets for capital goods,<br />
these goods can have no prices, <strong>and</strong> hence <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s cannot make<br />
judgments about the relative scarcities of these factors. In short, resources<br />
cannot be allocated efficiently. In any environment, then—socialist or<br />
not—where a factor of production has no market price, a potential user of<br />
that factor will be unable to make rational decisions about its use. Stated<br />
this way, Mises’s claim is simply that efficient resource allocation in a<br />
market economy requires well-functioning asset markets. Because scholars<br />
differ about what Mises “really meant,” however, it may be useful here to<br />
provide a brief review of the debate.<br />
Before 1920, according to the st<strong>and</strong>ard account, 5 socialist theorists<br />
paid little attention to how a socialist economy would work in practice,<br />
most heeding Marx’s admonition to avoid such “utopian” speculation.<br />
en Mises, known at the time mainly as a monetary theorist, published<br />
the sensational article later translated as “Economic Calculation in the<br />
Socialist Commonwealth” (1920). 6 Mises claimed that without private<br />
5 For examples of the “st<strong>and</strong>ard account” of the calculation debate see Schumpeter<br />
(1942, pp. 172–86) <strong>and</strong> Bergson (1948). My discussion of the “revisionist view” follows<br />
Hoff (1949), Salerno (1990a), <strong>and</strong> Rothbard (1991).<br />
6 Other works that made arguments similar to that of Mises include N. G. Pierson’s
7<br />
ownership of the means of production, there would be no market prices<br />
for capital goods, <strong>and</strong> therefore no way for decision-makers to evaluate<br />
the relative efficiency of various production techniques. Anticipating the<br />
later argument for “market socialism,” Mises argued that even if there<br />
were markets for consumer goods, a central planner could not “impute”<br />
meaningful prices to capital goods used to produce them. In short, without<br />
market-generated prices for both capital <strong>and</strong> consumer goods, even the<br />
most dedicated planner would find it “impossible” to allocate resources<br />
according to consumer wants.<br />
roughout the 1920s <strong>and</strong> early 1930s Mises’s argument became the<br />
focus of intense discussion within the German-language literature. Eventually<br />
it was agreed that Mises was correct at least to point out that a<br />
socialist society could not do without such things as money <strong>and</strong> prices,<br />
as some early socialists had suggested, <strong>and</strong> that there was no feasible way<br />
to set prices according, say, to quantities of labor time. Nonetheless, it<br />
was felt that Vilfredo Pareto <strong>and</strong> his follower Enrico Barone (1908) had<br />
shown that nothing was “theoretically” wrong with socialism, because the<br />
requisite number of dem<strong>and</strong> <strong>and</strong> supply equations to make the system<br />
“determinate” would exist under either capitalism or socialism. If the<br />
planners could somehow get the necessary information on preferences <strong>and</strong><br />
technology, they could in principle compute an equilibrium allocation of<br />
final goods.<br />
e most important response to Mises, however, <strong>and</strong> the one almost<br />
universally accepted by economists, was what became known as “market<br />
socialism” or the “mathematical solution,” developed by Fred Taylor<br />
(1929), H. D. Dickinson (1933), Abba Lerner (1934), <strong>and</strong> Oskar Lange<br />
(1936–37). In a system of market socialism, capital goods are collective<br />
property, but individuals are free to own <strong>and</strong> exchange final goods <strong>and</strong><br />
services. e system would work like this. First, the Central Planning<br />
Board chooses arbitrary prices for consumer <strong>and</strong> capital goods. At those<br />
prices, the managers of the various state-owned enterprises are instructed<br />
to produce up to the point where the marginal cost of each final good is<br />
equal to its price, <strong>and</strong> then to choose the input mix that minimizes the<br />
average cost of producing that quantity. en, consumer goods prices are<br />
“e Problem of Value in the Socialist Community” (1902) <strong>and</strong> parts of Max Weber’s<br />
Economy <strong>and</strong> Society (1921).
8 <br />
allowed to fluctuate, <strong>and</strong> the Central Planning Board adjusts the prices of<br />
capital goods as shortages <strong>and</strong> surpluses of the final goods develop. Resources<br />
would thus be allocated according to supply <strong>and</strong> dem<strong>and</strong>, through<br />
a process of “trial-<strong>and</strong>-error” essentially the same as that practiced by the<br />
managers of <strong>capitalist</strong> firms. Lange’s contribution, it has generally been<br />
held, was to show that production under market socialism could be just<br />
as efficient as production under capitalism, since the socialist planners<br />
“would receive exactly the same information from a socialized economic<br />
system as did <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s under a market system” (Heilbroner, 1970,<br />
p. 88). 7<br />
Market socialism was seen as an answer not only to Mises’s calculation<br />
problem, but also to the issue of “practicality” raised by Hayek <strong>and</strong> Lionel<br />
Robbins. Hayek, in his contributions to Collectivist Economic Planning<br />
(Hayek, 1935), later exp<strong>and</strong>ed in “e Competitive Solution” (1940) <strong>and</strong><br />
his well-known papers “Economics <strong>and</strong> Knowledge” (1937) <strong>and</strong> “e Use<br />
of Knowledge in Society” (1945), <strong>and</strong> Robbins, in his e Great Depression<br />
(1934), had changed the terms of the debate by focusing not on the<br />
problem of calculation, but on the problem of knowledge. For Hayek<br />
<strong>and</strong> Robbins, the failure of socialist organization is due to a mechanism<br />
design problem, in that planners cannot allocate resources efficiently because<br />
they cannot obtain complete information on consumer preferences<br />
<strong>and</strong> resource availability. Furthermore, even if the planners were somehow<br />
able to acquire these data, it would take years to compute the millions of<br />
prices used by a modern economy. e Lange–Lerner–Taylor approach<br />
claimed to solve this preference-revelation problem by trial-<strong>and</strong>-error, so<br />
no actual computations would be necessary. 8<br />
7 It would no doubt be gratuitous to point out that since the collapse of central planning<br />
in Eastern Europe the writer of that comment has changed his mind, writing that although<br />
fifty years ago, it was felt that Lange had decisively won the argument for socialist planning,<br />
“now it turns out, of course, that Mises was right” (Heilbroner, 1990, p. 92).<br />
8 Lange actually claimed years later that even market socialism would be made obsolete<br />
with the advent of high-speed computers, which could instantly solve the huge system of<br />
simultaneous equations for the central planner. “Were I to rewrite my [1936] essay today<br />
my task would be much simpler. My answer to Hayek <strong>and</strong> Robbins would be: So what’s<br />
the trouble? Let us put the simultaneous equations on an electronic computer <strong>and</strong> we<br />
shall obtain the solution in less than a second. e market process with its cumbersome<br />
tâtonnements appears old-fashioned. Indeed, it may be considered as a computing device of<br />
the pre-electronic age” (Lange, 1965, pp. 401–02). Obviously, Lange did not have much
9<br />
With the widespread acceptance of the theory of market socialism,<br />
there developed an “orthodox line” on the socialist calculation debate,<br />
neatly summarized in Abram Bergson’s well-known survey of “Socialist<br />
Economics” (1948) <strong>and</strong> in Joseph Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism <strong>and</strong><br />
Democracy (1942, pp. 172–86). According to this line, Mises first raised<br />
the problem of the possibility of economic calculation under socialism,<br />
only to be refuted by Pareto <strong>and</strong> Barone; Hayek <strong>and</strong> Robbins then “retreated”<br />
to the position that socialist planners could calculate in theory,<br />
but that in practice the information problem would make this too difficult;<br />
then the market socialists showed that trial <strong>and</strong> error would eliminate the<br />
need for complete information on the part of the planners. erefore, the<br />
argument goes, economic theory per se can say nothing conclusive about<br />
the viability of central planning, <strong>and</strong> the choice between capitalism <strong>and</strong><br />
socialism must be purely political.<br />
Calculation versus Incentives<br />
e orthodox line on socialist planning has been modified in recent years<br />
with the development of incentive <strong>and</strong> information theory. e differences<br />
between capitalism <strong>and</strong> socialism, it is now typically held, lie in the different<br />
incentive properties of the two systems. Centrally directed systems<br />
are thought to be subject to greater agency costs—managerial discretion,<br />
shirking, <strong>and</strong> so on—than market systems (see, for example Winiecki,<br />
1990). After all, Lange himself warned that “the real danger of socialism<br />
is that of a bureaucratization of economic life” (Lange, 1936–37, p. 109;<br />
italics in original).<br />
As has been pointed out elsewhere (Rothbard, 1991, pp. 51–52), however,<br />
the calculation debate was not primarily about agency or managerial<br />
incentives. e incentive problem had long been known 9 (if not fully developed)<br />
<strong>and</strong> was expressed in the famous question: “Under socialism, who<br />
will take out the garbage?” at is, if everyone is compensated “according<br />
to his needs,” what will be the incentive to do the dirty <strong>and</strong> unpleasant<br />
experience with a computer. Also, during his time as chairman of the Polish Economic<br />
Council in the 1950s, Lange never tried to put market socialism into practice (see Lange,<br />
1958).<br />
9 We tend to forget just how old the idea of socialism is, that it is not a twentieth-century<br />
invention; the subtitle of Alex<strong>and</strong>er Gray’s famous book e Socialist Tradition (1946) is<br />
“Moses to Lenin.”
10 <br />
tasks; or, for that matter, any tasks at all? e traditional socialist answer<br />
was that self-interest is a product of capitalism, <strong>and</strong> that socialism would<br />
bring about a change in human nature. In the worker’s paradise would<br />
emerge a “New Socialist Man,” eager to serve <strong>and</strong> motivated only by the<br />
needs of his fellows. ese early theorists seem to have assumed, to borrow<br />
the expression used by Oliver Williamson (1991a, p. 18) in a critique of a<br />
more recent socialist proposal, “the abolition of opportunism by agencies<br />
of the state.” Experience has exposed the charming naiveté of such notions.<br />
But Mises’s challenge to socialism is distinct from this well-known<br />
incentive problem. 10 Assume for the moment that everyone is willing to<br />
work just as hard under central direction as under a market system. ere<br />
still remains the problem of exactly what directives the Central Planning<br />
Board will issue. e Board will have to decide what goods <strong>and</strong> services<br />
should be produced, how much of each to produce, what intermediate<br />
goods are needed to produce each final good, <strong>and</strong> so on. In a complex,<br />
modern economy with multiple stages of production, resource allocation<br />
requires the existence of money prices for capital goods, prices that under<br />
capitalism arise from an ongoing process of competitive bidding by <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s<br />
for the factors of production. is process cannot be replicated by<br />
input-output analysis, computer simulations, or any other form of artificial<br />
market. Mises’s main point was that socialism fails because decision makers<br />
require meaningful prices for all of these factors to choose from the vast<br />
array of possible factor combinations. “Without recourse to calculating<br />
<strong>and</strong> comparing the benefits <strong>and</strong> costs of production using the structure of<br />
monetary prices determined at each moment on the market, the human<br />
mind is only capable of surveying, evaluating, <strong>and</strong> directing production<br />
processes whose scope is drastically reduced to the compass of the primitive<br />
household economy” (Salerno, 1990a, p. 52).<br />
e distinction between calculation <strong>and</strong> incentives is important because<br />
the modern economics literature on organizational design—from<br />
transaction cost explanations of firm size, to public choice theories of bureaucracy,<br />
to recent work on market socialism <strong>and</strong> the “soft budget constraint”<br />
(Kornai, 1986)—focuses primarily on incentive problems (possi-<br />
10 Mises does devote a section of the 1920 paper to “Responsibility <strong>and</strong> Initiative in<br />
Communal Concerns,” but he clearly considers this a secondary problem for socialist<br />
planners, not the primary one. In the book-length treatment, Socialism (1922), Mises<br />
discusses the incentive problem in greater detail (pp. 163–84).
11<br />
bly encouraged by Lange’s famous warning about bureaucracy). Incentive<br />
theory asks how, within a specified relationship, a principal can get an<br />
agent to do what he wants him to do. Mises’s problem, however, was<br />
different: How does the principal know what to tell the agent to do? at<br />
is, just what activities ought to be undertaken? What investments should<br />
be made? Which product lines exp<strong>and</strong>ed <strong>and</strong> which ones contracted? e<br />
ideas developed in the calculation debate suggest that when organizations<br />
are large enough to conduct activities that are exclusively internal—so that<br />
no reference to the outside market is available—they will face a calculation<br />
problem as well as an incentive problem.<br />
In this sense, market-socialist proposals are mostly irrelevant to the real<br />
problems of socialist organization. is is the case Mises himself sought to<br />
make in his critique of market socialism in Human Action (Mises, 1949,<br />
pp. 694–711). ere he complained that the market socialists—<strong>and</strong>, for<br />
that matter, all general equilibrium theorists—misconceive the nature of<br />
“the economic problem.” Lange, Lerner, <strong>and</strong> Taylor looked primarily at<br />
the problem of consumer goods pricing, while the crucial problem facing<br />
a modern economy concerns the capital structure: namely, in what<br />
way should capital be allocated to various activities? e market economy,<br />
Mises argued, is driven not by “management”—the performance of<br />
specified tasks, within a framework given to the manager—but by <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship,<br />
the speculation, arbitrage, <strong>and</strong> other risk-bearing activities<br />
that determine just what the managerial tasks are. It is not managers but<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s, acting in the capital <strong>and</strong> money markets, who establish <strong>and</strong><br />
dissolve corporations, create <strong>and</strong> destroy product lines, <strong>and</strong> so on. ese<br />
are precisely the activities that even market socialism seeks to abolish. In<br />
other words, to the extent that incentives are important, what socialism<br />
cannot preserve are high-powered incentives not in management, but in<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial forecasting <strong>and</strong> decision making.<br />
Mises has been described as saying that it is unreasonable to expect<br />
managers of socialist enterprises to “play market,” to act as if they were<br />
managers of private firms where their own direct interests were at stake.<br />
is may be true, but Mises’s prime concern was that <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s cannot<br />
be asked to “play speculation <strong>and</strong> investment” (Mises, 1949, p. 705). e<br />
relevant incentive problem, he maintains, is not that of the subordinate<br />
manager (the agent), who takes the problem to be solved as given, but<br />
that of the speculator <strong>and</strong> investor (the principal), who decides just what
12 <br />
is the problem to be solved. Lange, Lerner, <strong>and</strong> Taylor see the market<br />
through a strictly static, neoclassical lens, where all the parameters of the<br />
system are given <strong>and</strong> only a computational problem needs to be solved.<br />
In fact the market economy is a dynamic, creative, evolving process, in<br />
which <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s—using economic calculation—make industries grow<br />
<strong>and</strong> shrink, cause new <strong>and</strong> different production methods to be tried <strong>and</strong><br />
others withdrawn, <strong>and</strong> constantly change the range of available products.<br />
It is these features of market capitalism, <strong>and</strong> not the incentives of agents<br />
to work hard, that are lost without private property ownership.<br />
Indeed, traditional comm<strong>and</strong>-style economies, such as that of the<br />
former USSR, appear to be able only to mimic those tasks that market<br />
economies have performed before; they are unable to set up <strong>and</strong> execute<br />
original tasks.<br />
e [Soviet] system has been particularly effective when the<br />
central priorities involve catching up, for then the problems of<br />
knowing what to do, when <strong>and</strong> how to do it, <strong>and</strong> whether it was<br />
properly done, are solved by reference to a working model, by exploiting<br />
what Gerschenkron ... called the “advantage of backwardness.”<br />
... Accompanying these advantages are shortcomings, inherent<br />
in the nature of the system. When the system pursues a few<br />
priority objectives, regardless of sacrifices or losses in lower priority<br />
areas, those ultimately responsible cannot know whether the<br />
success was worth achieving. e central authorities lack the information<br />
<strong>and</strong> physical capability to monitor all important costs—in<br />
particular opportunity costs—yet they are the only ones, given the<br />
logic of the system, with a true interest in knowing such costs.<br />
(Ericson, 1991, p. 21).<br />
Without economic calculation, there is no way to figure out if tasks<br />
have been performed efficiently. Hence without markets for physical<br />
<strong>and</strong> financial capital—which determine what tasks will be performed <strong>and</strong><br />
whether they have been performed adequately—an economic system has<br />
difficulty generating anything new, <strong>and</strong> must rely on outside references to<br />
tell it what to do. Of course, the only reason the Soviet Union <strong>and</strong> the<br />
communist nations of Eastern Europe could exist at all is that they never<br />
fully succeeded in establishing socialism worldwide, so they could use<br />
world market prices to establish implicit prices for the goods they bought<br />
<strong>and</strong> sold internally (Rothbard, 1991, pp. 73–74). In Mises’s words, these<br />
economies
13<br />
were not isolated social systems. ey were operating in an environment<br />
in which the price system still worked. ey could<br />
resort to economic calculation on the ground of the prices established<br />
abroad. Without the aid of these prices their actions would<br />
have been aimless <strong>and</strong> planless. Only because they were able to<br />
refer to these foreign prices were they able to calculate, to keep<br />
books, <strong>and</strong> to prepare their much talked about plans. (Mises, 1949,<br />
pp. 698–99).<br />
As we will see below, the firm is in the same situation: it needs outside<br />
market prices to plan <strong>and</strong> evaluate its actions.<br />
Rothbard <strong>and</strong> the Limits of Organization<br />
Rothbard’s main contribution to the theory of the firm was to generalize<br />
Mises’s analysis of the problem of resource allocation under socialism to the<br />
context of vertical integration <strong>and</strong> the size of the organization. Rothbard<br />
writes in Man, Economy, <strong>and</strong> State that up to a point, the size of the firm<br />
is determined by costs, as in the textbook model. But “the ultimate limits<br />
are set on the relative size of the firm by the necessity for markets to exist<br />
in every factor, in order to make it possible for the firm to calculate its<br />
profits <strong>and</strong> losses” (Rothbard, 1962, p. 599). is argument hinges on the<br />
notion of “implicit costs.” e market value of opportunity costs for factor<br />
services—what Rothbard calls “estimates of implicit incomes”—can be determined<br />
only if there are external markets for those factors (pp. 607–09).<br />
For example, if an <strong>entrepreneur</strong> hires himself to manage his business, the<br />
opportunity cost of his labor must be included in the firm’s costs. But without<br />
an actual market for the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>’s managerial services, he will be<br />
unable to figure out his opportunity cost; his balance sheets will therefore<br />
be less accurate than they would if he could measure his opportunity cost.<br />
e same problem affects a firm owning multiple stages of production.<br />
A large, integrated firm is typically organized as groups of semiautonomous<br />
business units or “profit centers,” each unit or division specializing<br />
in a particular final or intermediate product. e central management<br />
of the firm uses the implicit incomes of the business units, as<br />
reflected in statements of divisional profit <strong>and</strong> loss, to allocate physical<br />
<strong>and</strong> financial capital across the divisions. More profitable divisions are<br />
exp<strong>and</strong>ed, while less profitable divisions are scaled back. Suppose the firm
14 <br />
has an upstream division selling an intermediate component to a downstream<br />
division. To compute the divisional profits <strong>and</strong> losses, the firm<br />
needs an economically meaningful “transfer price” for the component. If<br />
there is an external market for the component, the firm can use that market<br />
price as the transfer price. 11 Without a market price, however, a transfer<br />
price must be estimated in another way.<br />
In practice, this is typically done on a cost-plus basis; sometimes, the<br />
buying <strong>and</strong> selling divisions are left free to bargain over the price (Eccles<br />
<strong>and</strong> White, 1988; Shelanski, 1993; King, 1994). At the very least, any<br />
artificial or substitute transfer prices will contain less information than<br />
actual market prices; Rothbard (1962, p. 613) puts it more strongly, calling<br />
a substitute price “only an arbitrary symbol.” In either case, firms relying on<br />
these prices will suffer. “Not being able to calculate a price, the firm could<br />
not rationally allocate factors <strong>and</strong> resources from one stage [or division] to<br />
another” (Rothbard, 1962, p. 613) e use of internally traded intermediate<br />
goods for which no external market reference is available introduces<br />
distortions that reduce organizational efficiency. is gives us the element<br />
missing from contemporary theories of economic organization, an upper<br />
bound: the firm is constrained by the need for external markets for all<br />
internally traded goods. In other words, no firm can become so large that<br />
it is both the unique producer <strong>and</strong> user of an intermediate product; for<br />
then no market-based transfer prices will be available, <strong>and</strong> the firm will<br />
be unable to calculate divisional profit <strong>and</strong> loss <strong>and</strong> therefore unable to<br />
allocate resources correctly between divisions. As Rothbard puts it:<br />
Since the free market always tends to establish the most efficient<br />
<strong>and</strong> profitable type of production (whether for type of good,<br />
11 Rothbard (1962, pp. 612, n. 56) notes that the implicit transfer price may be somewhat<br />
more or less than the existing market price, since the entry of either the buying<br />
or the selling division into the external market may bid the price up or down slightly.<br />
Unlike Hirshleifer (1956), then, Rothbard does not require the external market to be<br />
perfectly competitive for a market-based transfer price to be economically meaningful. For<br />
Rothbard, “thin” markets are adequate: all that is necessary to have a genuine “external<br />
market” is the existence of at least one other producer (seller) of the intermediate good.<br />
(Of course, if external prices are perfectly competitive, then the economy must be in a<br />
competitive general equilibrium, in which information is perfect <strong>and</strong> all contracts are<br />
complete, <strong>and</strong> in which there is thus no need for firms.) Rothbard does not discuss<br />
the potential “holdup” problem that follows from relationship-specific investment under<br />
bilateral monopoly (Klein, Crawford, <strong>and</strong> Alchian, 1978), which should be considered a<br />
cost of reliance on an external market with a single supplier.
15<br />
method of production, allocation of factors, or size of firm), we<br />
must conclude that complete vertical integration for a capital-good<br />
product can never be established on the free market (above the<br />
primitive level). For every capital good, there must be a definite market<br />
in which firms buy <strong>and</strong> sell that good. It is obvious that this economic<br />
law sets a definite maximum to the relative size of any particular firm<br />
on the free market.... Economic calculation becomes ever more<br />
important as the market economy develops <strong>and</strong> progresses, as the<br />
stages <strong>and</strong> the complexities of type <strong>and</strong> variety of capital goods<br />
increase. Ever more important for the maintenance of an advanced<br />
economy, then, is the preservation of markets for all the capital<br />
<strong>and</strong> other producers’ goods. (Rothbard, 1962, p. 613; italics in<br />
original)<br />
Like the centrally planned economy, the firm needs market signals<br />
to guide its actions; without them the firm cannot survive. Note that in<br />
general, Rothbard is making a claim only about the upper bound of the<br />
firm, not the incremental cost of exp<strong>and</strong>ing the firm’s activities (as long<br />
as external market references are available). As soon as the firm exp<strong>and</strong>s<br />
to the point where at least one external market has disappeared, however,<br />
the calculation problem exists. e difficulties become worse as more <strong>and</strong><br />
more external markets disappear, as “isl<strong>and</strong>s of noncalculable chaos swell<br />
to the proportions of masses <strong>and</strong> continents. As the area of incalculability<br />
increases, the degrees of irrationality, misallocation, loss, impoverishment,<br />
etc., become greater” (p. 548). In other words, the firm is limited by the<br />
extent to which markets exist for the goods it allocates internally. Without<br />
market prices for these goods, the firm must rely on relatively costly <strong>and</strong><br />
inefficient methods of generating its own accounting prices, to perform<br />
internal calculations. 12<br />
Significantly, it is at this point in the discussion in Man, Economy,<br />
<strong>and</strong> State (p. 548) that Rothbard launches into a discussion of the socialist<br />
calculation debate, making it obvious that the two issues are inextricably<br />
linked. e reason that a socialist economy cannot calculate is not that<br />
12 is does not mean that because external prices are necessary for large firms to function<br />
efficiently, firms will necessarily become larger where external markets are “thick” or better<br />
developed. On the contrary, large firms typically arise precisely where external markets<br />
are poorly developed or hampered by government intervention; these are the kinds of<br />
circumstances that give <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s an advantage in coordinating activities internally.<br />
However, such firms are still constrained by the need for some external market reference.
16 <br />
it is socialist, but because a single agent owns <strong>and</strong> directs all resources.<br />
Exp<strong>and</strong>ing on this point in his 1976 essay on “Ludwig von Mises <strong>and</strong><br />
Economic Calculation Under Socialism,” Rothbard explains:<br />
ere is one vital but neglected area where the Mises analysis of<br />
economic calculation needs to be exp<strong>and</strong>ed. For in a profound<br />
sense, the theory is not about socialism at all! Instead, it applies to<br />
any situation where one group has acquired control of the means<br />
of production over a large area—or, in a strict sense, throughout<br />
the world. On this particular aspect of socialism, it doesn’t matter<br />
whether this unitary control has come about through the coercive<br />
expropriation brought about by socialism or by voluntary processes<br />
on the free market. For what the Mises theory focuses on is not simply<br />
the numerous inefficiencies of the political as compared to the<br />
profit-making market process, but the fact that a market for capital<br />
goods has disappeared. is means that, just as socialist central<br />
planning could not calculate economically, no One Big Firm could<br />
own or control the entire economy. e Mises analysis applies<br />
to any situation where a market for capital goods has disappeared<br />
in a complex industrial economy, whether because of socialism or<br />
because of a giant merger into One Big Firm or One Big Cartel.<br />
(Rothbard, 1976, p. 75)<br />
e Mises analysis thus applies to any situation where the market for a<br />
particular capital good disappears because a firm has become so large that<br />
it is the unique producer <strong>and</strong> user of that capital good. As we have seen,<br />
such a firm will not be viable.<br />
It is surprising that Rothbard’s extension of Mises’s argument has<br />
received virtually no attention in the Austrian literature, even though<br />
the point appears four times in Man, Economy, <strong>and</strong> State (p. 536, p. 543,<br />
pp. 547–48, <strong>and</strong> p. 585) <strong>and</strong> again in the 1976 essay. 13 e argument<br />
needs further development <strong>and</strong> elaboration, which should prove a useful<br />
exercise because the contemporary literature on the size of the firm lacks an<br />
13 Lavoie briefly notes the Rothbard analysis in his Rivalry <strong>and</strong> Central Planning (1985,<br />
p. 62n). Fritz Machlup, in a comment on Rothbard’s 1976 essay, says he is “intrigued”<br />
by the analogy between the central planner’s problem <strong>and</strong> the firm’s problem, calling it<br />
“an issue I have tried to sell in several of my publications ... but unfortunately not with<br />
sufficient success” (Machlup, 1976a, p. 114). He cites an early book (Machlup, 1934,<br />
esp. pp. 209–14) <strong>and</strong> a later article (Machlup, 1974, esp. pp. 42–45 <strong>and</strong> 52–54), both<br />
published in German, on the problem of “artificial” transfer prices. e argument is also<br />
foreshadowed by Hayek in Prices <strong>and</strong> Production (1931, p. 63) in a discussion on vertical<br />
integration.
17<br />
adequate explanation for the limits to organization. e Rothbard analysis<br />
also suggests a line of research in business strategy: all else equal, firms able<br />
to use market-based transfer prices should outperform, in the long run,<br />
firms using administered or negotiated transfer prices. 14 As of yet, there is<br />
little empirical work on this topic, despite a growing interest in Austrian<br />
economics within the strategic management field (Jacobson, 1992; Lewin<br />
<strong>and</strong> Phelan, 1999; Foss <strong>and</strong> Mahnke, 2000; Langlois, 2001; Roberts <strong>and</strong><br />
Eisenhardt, 2003; Yu, 2003; Ng, 2005; Mathews, 2006).<br />
A related issue that has received considerable attention, however, is the<br />
difficulty of allocating overhead or fixed cost across divisions. If an input is<br />
essentially indivisible (or nonexcludable), then there is no way to compute<br />
the opportunity cost of just the portion of the input used by a particular<br />
division (see Rogerson, 1992, for a discussion of these problems). 15 Firms<br />
with high overhead costs should thus be at a disadvantage relative to firms<br />
able to allocate costs more precisely between business units. Indeed, in the<br />
literature on cost accounting there has been some recent interest in “market<br />
simulation accounting” (Staubus, 1986), by which firms try to assess the<br />
price at which an asset would trade in an active market, based on observed<br />
market prices <strong>and</strong> related information. e Rothbardian position on the<br />
limits to firm size suggests that the market simulation approach may prove<br />
a useful accounting technique.<br />
By the time of the 1976 paper, Rothbard had adopted an explicitly<br />
Coasian framework in his discussion of the limits to firm size. His own<br />
treatment, Rothbard says,<br />
serves to extend the notable analysis of Professor Coase on the market<br />
determinants of the size of the firm, or the relative extent of<br />
corporate planning within the firm as against the use of exchange<br />
<strong>and</strong> the price mechanism. Coase pointed out that there are diminishing<br />
benefits <strong>and</strong> increasing costs to each of these two alternatives,<br />
resulting, as he put it, in an “ ‘optimum’ amount of planning” in<br />
14 is line of reasoning has interesting implications for the study of innovation. Since<br />
the innovating firm is more likely to be using unique intermediate goods, particularly in<br />
industries where few of the relevant manufacturing capabilities exist in the market (Langlois<br />
<strong>and</strong> Robertson, 1995), innovation carries with its benefits the cost of more severe internal<br />
distortions. Economic calculation is then another obstacle the innovator must overcome.<br />
15 Mises (1944, p. 32) recognized the problem of allocating overhead costs, mentioning<br />
this as a possible exception to the notion that divisional accounting costs can reflect “true”<br />
costs.
18 <br />
the free market system. Our thesis adds that the costs of internal<br />
corporate planning become prohibitive as soon as markets for<br />
capital goods begin to disappear, so that the free-market optimum<br />
will always stop well short not only of One Big Firm throughout<br />
the world market but also of any disappearance of specific markets<br />
<strong>and</strong> hence of economic calculation in that product or resource.<br />
(Rothbard, 1976, p. 76)<br />
is is noteworthy because even as late as 1972, Coase was describing<br />
his 1937 paper as “much cited <strong>and</strong> little used” (Coase, 1972, p. 62).<br />
Alchian <strong>and</strong> Demsetz’s “Production, Information Costs, <strong>and</strong> Economic<br />
Organization” came out only in 1972, <strong>and</strong> Williamson’s Markets <strong>and</strong> Hierarchies<br />
in 1975. Rothbard was thus among the earliest writers to develop<br />
<strong>and</strong> extend the Coasian perspective.<br />
Alternative Austrian Approaches<br />
ere is some debate within the Austrian literature about whether the basic<br />
Coasian approach is compatible with Austrian economics. O’Driscoll<br />
<strong>and</strong> Rizzo (1985, p. 124), while acknowledging Coase’s approach as an<br />
“excellent static conceptualization of the problem,” argue that a more evolutionary<br />
framework is needed to underst<strong>and</strong> how firms respond to change.<br />
Some Austrian economists have suggested that the Coasian framework<br />
may be too narrow, too squarely in the general-equilibrium tradition to<br />
deal adequately with Austrian concerns (Boudreaux <strong>and</strong> Holcombe, 1989;<br />
Langlois, 1994a). ey contend that the contemporary theory of the firm,<br />
following Coase, retains the perspective of static equilibrium analysis <strong>and</strong><br />
profit maximization over a fixed set of outcomes with known probabilities.<br />
As an alternative, some writers propose the framework in Frank<br />
Knight’s Risk, Uncertainty, <strong>and</strong> Profit (1921). e Knightian framework,<br />
they argue, offers genuine uncertainty, disequilibrium <strong>and</strong> process analysis,<br />
<strong>and</strong> thus a scope for real <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship—aspects purportedly more<br />
congenial to Austrians. “e Coasian <strong>and</strong> Knightian theories of the firm<br />
deal with the issue [of the existence of firms] from two different vantage<br />
points. e Coasian theory takes the inputs <strong>and</strong> outputs in the firm’s<br />
production process as given, <strong>and</strong> models the firm as an organization that<br />
acts to minimize the costs of transforming these inputs into outputs....<br />
However, in Knight’s model, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship is the primary role of the
19<br />
firm (Boudreaux <strong>and</strong> Holcombe, 1989, p. 152). Williamson’s transaction<br />
cost economics, as characterized by Langlois (1994a, p. 175), does broaden<br />
the notion of cost minimization to include transaction costs as well as production<br />
costs, but it remains essentially a static exercise with a limited role<br />
for expectations: “Seldom does the theory give thought to the possibility<br />
that organizational forms may be influenced as much by environments that<br />
exist only as future possibilities, imagined or feared.”<br />
To be sure, the Knightian concept of the profit-seeking <strong>entrepreneur</strong>,<br />
investing resources under uncertainty, is one of the great contributions<br />
to the theory of the firm. As discussed in chapters 4, 5, <strong>and</strong> 6 below, it<br />
is close to Mises’s concept of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> (closer, in my view, than<br />
Israel Kirzner’s underst<strong>and</strong>ing of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship). Still, these critiques<br />
of the Coasian framework paint with too broad a brush; as Foss (1993c)<br />
points out, there are “two Coasian traditions.” One tradition, the nexus-ofcontracts<br />
branch associated with Alchian <strong>and</strong> Demsetz (1972), studies the<br />
design of ex ante mechanisms to limit shirking when supervision is costly.<br />
Here the emphasis is on monitoring <strong>and</strong> incentives in an (exogenously<br />
determined) moral-hazard relationship. e aforementioned criticisms<br />
may apply to this branch of the modern literature, but they do not apply<br />
to the other tradition, the governance or asset-specificity branch, especially<br />
in Williamson’s more heterodox formulation. Williamson’s transaction<br />
cost framework incorporates non-maximizing behavior (bounded rationality);<br />
true, “structural” uncertainty or genuine surprise (complete contracts<br />
are held not to be feasible, meaning that all ex post contingencies cannot<br />
be contracted upon ex ante); <strong>and</strong> process or adaptation over time (trading<br />
relationships develop over time, typically undergoing a “fundamental<br />
transformation” that changes the terms of trade). In short, “at least some<br />
modern theories of the firm do not at all presuppose the ‘closed’ economic<br />
universe—with all relevant inputs <strong>and</strong> outputs being given, human action<br />
conceptualized as maximization, etc., that [some critics] claim are<br />
underneath the contemporary theory of the firm” (Foss, 1993a, p. 274).<br />
Stated differently, one can adopt an essentially Coasian perspective without<br />
ab<strong>and</strong>oning the Knightian or Austrian view of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> as an<br />
uncertainty-bearing, innovating decision-maker. 16<br />
16 Nor do all Coasian perspectives deny the importance of specialized knowledge lines<br />
in determining a firm’s capabilities or “core competence.” Transaction cost economics, for<br />
example, simply holds that the need for ex post governance of contracts in the presence
20 <br />
Similarly, the approach described in this chapter differs from that advanced<br />
in the literature on “market-based management” (Ellig, 1993; Ellig<br />
<strong>and</strong> Gable, 1993; Koch, 2007). Market-based management is the philosophy<br />
that firm success depends critically on the ability to replicate marketlike<br />
features within the organization. One of these is “internal markets”<br />
for intermediate goods (<strong>and</strong> services such as financial, legal, accounting,<br />
<strong>and</strong> R&D support) along with the establishment of strict profit-center<br />
divisions. Like market prices, these internal prices convey information<br />
about local circumstances. Other features include an explicit “mission”<br />
or recognition of the firm’s core competence, clearly defined roles <strong>and</strong><br />
responsibilities for lower-level employees (analogous to property rights in<br />
a market economy), employee rewards based on performance (a profit<strong>and</strong>-loss<br />
system), a well-defined “corporate culture” (customs, behavioral<br />
norms), <strong>and</strong> decentralized decision making.<br />
Underlying market-based management is the team-production or<br />
nexus-of-contracts model of the firm advanced by Alchian <strong>and</strong> Demsetz<br />
(1972), supplemented with the “capabilities” theory of Edith Penrose<br />
(1959), G. B. Richardson (1972), David Teece (1980; 1982), <strong>and</strong> others.<br />
But the market-based management literature, like other writings<br />
in the nexus-of-contracts tradition, appears to mischaracterize the nature<br />
of “planning” within the firm. For example, it attributes to the<br />
Coase–Williamson tradition the view that “internal markets are doomed to<br />
failure, because the business firm is by nature a comm<strong>and</strong> hierarchy” (Ellig,<br />
1993, p. 9). e Coasian tradition, however, does not imply that firms<br />
do or should adopt a comm<strong>and</strong>-<strong>and</strong>-control structure; on the contrary,<br />
as we have already seen, the modern firm will tend to be significantly<br />
decentralized, so that managers <strong>and</strong> workers at all levels of operations can<br />
make use of local knowledge. All decisions are not made from above,<br />
by executive fiat; the “M-form” corporation described by Williamson<br />
<strong>and</strong> Ch<strong>and</strong>ler is a blend of market <strong>and</strong> hierarchy, of centralization <strong>and</strong><br />
decentralization.<br />
In other words, the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> does make some decisions by “fiat”;<br />
the firm is definitely a taxis, rather than a cosmos (to use Hayek’s esoteric<br />
of relationship-specific investments, <strong>and</strong> not “tacit knowledge” per se, is the most useful<br />
way to think about the boundaries of the firm. For the case that Austrian economics is<br />
more compatible with the capabilities literature (for substantive, not only methodological,<br />
reasons), see Minkler (1993b) <strong>and</strong> Langlois (1994a).
21<br />
terminology). 17 is does not imply, however, that all decisions must<br />
be made from the top; we can agree with the market-based management<br />
literature that “neither central planning nor comm<strong>and</strong>-<strong>and</strong>-control are the<br />
defining characteristics of a business firm” (Ellig, 1993, p. 11). Indeed,<br />
given competition in the product <strong>and</strong> factor markets, firms will always<br />
tend to select the optimum amount of “market-like” features. e firm’s<br />
problem, then, is not too much “conscious” planning; the crucial issue<br />
is whether these plans are made, <strong>and</strong> tested, from within a larger market<br />
setting. e <strong>entrepreneur</strong>’s plans can be carried out, as we saw above, only<br />
when there are definite markets for all internally traded goods or activities.<br />
What firms need is not necessarily internal markets, but the information<br />
generated by market prices.<br />
Conclusion<br />
is chapter has highlighted some Austrian contributions to the theory<br />
of the firm <strong>and</strong> suggested directions for future research along the same<br />
lines. In particular, Rothbard’s argument about the need for markets in<br />
intermediate goods, <strong>and</strong> how that places limits on the scale <strong>and</strong> scope of<br />
the organization, deserves further development. e chapter also points<br />
the way toward an Austrian approach that makes the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>, <strong>and</strong><br />
his acts of resource allocation using monetary calculation, central to the<br />
theory of the firm.<br />
17 See also Tullock (1969).
CHAPTER 2<br />
Entrepreneurship <strong>and</strong> Corporate Governance †<br />
In his “closing salvo” in the socialist calculation debate, Mises (1949,<br />
pp. 694–711) argued that the market socialists failed to underst<strong>and</strong> the<br />
role of financial markets in an industrial economy. Even with markets<br />
for consumer goods, he explained, socialism would fail because it substituted<br />
collective ownership of the means of production for private capital<br />
markets. rough these markets, owners of financial capital decide which<br />
firms, <strong>and</strong> which industries, receive resources to make consumer goods.<br />
In a modern economy, most production takes place in publicly held<br />
corporations. Of prime importance, then, is the problem of corporate<br />
governance: How do owners of financial capital structure their agreements<br />
with those who receive that capital, to prevent its misuse? Unfortunately,<br />
there exists little research in this area from an Austrian perspective.<br />
In this chapter, I focus on the financial-market <strong>entrepreneur</strong>—what<br />
Rothbard (1962, 1985) calls the <strong>capitalist</strong>-<strong>entrepreneur</strong>—to outline some<br />
features of an Austrian theory of corporate governance. I begin by reviewing<br />
the traditional, production-function theory of the firm <strong>and</strong> suggesting<br />
two alternative perspectives: that of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> <strong>and</strong> that of the<br />
† Published originally in Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 2, no. 2 (Summer<br />
1999): 19–42. A Spanish translation, “Función empresarial y control de la dirección de le<br />
empresa,” appeared in Libertas 16, no. 31 (October 1999): 3–49.<br />
23
24 <br />
<strong>capitalist</strong>. I next discuss the Coasian, or “contractual” approach to the<br />
firm <strong>and</strong> argue that it provides a useful organizing framework for Austrian<br />
research on the firm. e subsequent section proposes <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship<br />
<strong>and</strong> economic calculation as building blocks for an Austrian theory of<br />
the firm. Finally, after a brief review of capital-market behavior <strong>and</strong> the<br />
disciplinary role of takeovers, I outline four areas for Austrian research<br />
in corporate governance: firms as investments, internal capital markets,<br />
comparative corporate governance, <strong>and</strong> financiers as <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s.<br />
Limits of the St<strong>and</strong>ard Approach to the Firm<br />
As we saw in chapter 1, the “firm” of economics textbooks is not really<br />
a firm at all. e firm is treated as a production function or production<br />
possibilities set, a “black box” that transforms inputs into outputs. While<br />
descriptively vacuous, the production-function approach has the appeal<br />
of analytical tractability along with its elegant parallel to neoclassical consumer<br />
theory (profit maximization is like utility maximization, isoquants<br />
are indifference curves, <strong>and</strong> so on). Nonetheless, many economists now<br />
see it as increasingly unsatisfactory, as unable to account for a variety<br />
of real-world business practices: vertical <strong>and</strong> lateral integration, mergers,<br />
geographic <strong>and</strong> product-line diversification, franchising, long-term commercial<br />
contracting, transfer pricing, research joint ventures, <strong>and</strong> many<br />
others. e inadequacy of the traditional theory of the firm explains much<br />
of the recent interest in agency theory, transaction cost economics, the capabilities<br />
approach, <strong>and</strong> other facets of the “new institutional economics.” 1<br />
A more serious problem with the traditional theory, however, has received<br />
less attention. e theory of profit maximization is nearly always told from<br />
the perspective of the manager, the agent who operates the plant, not that<br />
of the owner, who supplies the capital to fund the plant. Yet owners control<br />
how much authority to delegate to operational managers, so <strong>capitalist</strong>s are<br />
the ultimate decision makers. To underst<strong>and</strong> the firm, then, we must focus<br />
on the actions <strong>and</strong> plans of the suppliers of financial capital.<br />
Focusing on capital markets <strong>and</strong> the corporate governance problem<br />
highlights a fundamental analytical problem with the traditional approach<br />
1 e new institutional economics is reviewed <strong>and</strong> critiqued in Furubotn <strong>and</strong> Richter<br />
(1997), Klein (2000), Williamson (2000), Ménard <strong>and</strong> Shirley (2005) <strong>and</strong> Brousseau <strong>and</strong><br />
Glachant (2008).
25<br />
to the theory of the firm. In the production-function approach, money<br />
capital is treated as a factor of production. e manager’s objective is to<br />
maximize the difference between total revenues <strong>and</strong> total costs, with the<br />
cost of capital treated simply as another cost (<strong>and</strong> typically assumed to<br />
be exogenous). e residual, “profit,” is retained by the manager. Hence<br />
financial capital receives scant attention. As discussed below, this can be a<br />
serious flaw.<br />
Two Alternative Perspectives<br />
What, then, is the proper way to underst<strong>and</strong> the business firm? Two alternative<br />
perspectives deserve consideration. e first perspective, which has<br />
received substantial attention in the Austrian literature, is that of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>,<br />
or what Mises (1949, p. 256) calls the “<strong>entrepreneur</strong>-promoter.”<br />
Entrepreneurship, in the Misesian sense, is the act of bearing uncertainty.<br />
Production unfolds through time, <strong>and</strong> thus the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> must purchase<br />
factors of production in the present (paying today’s prices, which are<br />
known), in anticipation of revenues from the future sale of the product<br />
(at tomorrow’s prices, which are uncertain). Entrepreneurial profit or loss<br />
is the difference between these revenues <strong>and</strong> the initial outlays, less the<br />
general rate of interest. As such, profit is the reward for successfully bearing<br />
uncertainty. Successful promoters make accurate forecasts of future prices<br />
<strong>and</strong> receive returns greater than their outlays. ose whose forecasts are<br />
less accurate earn losses. Promoters who systematically make poor forecasts<br />
quickly find themselves unable to secure any further resources for<br />
investment <strong>and</strong> eventually exit the market. 2<br />
e second perspective is that of the <strong>capitalist</strong>, the owner of the<br />
firm. Ownership can also be thought of as a factor of production—what<br />
Rothbard (1962, pp. 601–05) calls the “decision making factor”—but it is<br />
2 Mises (1949, p. 254) defines the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial function broadly, referring to “the aspect<br />
of uncertainty inherent in every action.” He quotes the English idiom: “ere’s many<br />
a slip ’twixt cup <strong>and</strong> lip” (p. 254). He defines <strong>entrepreneur</strong>-promoters more narrowly, as<br />
uncertainty-bearers “who are especially eager to profit from adjusting production to the<br />
expected changes in conditions, those who have more initiative, more venturesomeness,<br />
<strong>and</strong> a quicker eye than the crowd, the pushing <strong>and</strong> promoting pioneers of economic<br />
improvement.” He laments that the same word, “<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship,” has been used both<br />
for the general concept of uncertainty-bearing <strong>and</strong> the narrower role of the bold, active,<br />
creative, business person.
26 <br />
different from the other factors. In an ownership approach, money capital<br />
is treated as a unique factor of production, the “controlling factor”; the<br />
investor is both ultimate decision-maker <strong>and</strong> residual claimant. e firm’s<br />
objective is to maximize the return on the owner’s investment. Because<br />
the owner delegates certain functions to managers, a central focus of the<br />
theory of the firm becomes the problem of corporate governance: how do<br />
suppliers of capital structure their arrangements with managers in a way<br />
that maximizes their returns?<br />
is chapter argues that the most interesting problems in the theory<br />
of the firm relate to the intersection between the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial function<br />
<strong>and</strong> the <strong>capitalist</strong> function. Indeed, as Mises argued, the driving<br />
force behind the market economy is a particular type of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>,<br />
the <strong>capitalist</strong>-<strong>entrepreneur</strong>, who risks his money capital in anticipation of<br />
future, uncertain, returns. Moreover, as discussed below, the <strong>entrepreneur</strong><br />
is nearly always also a <strong>capitalist</strong>, <strong>and</strong> the <strong>capitalist</strong> is also an <strong>entrepreneur</strong>.<br />
Economists now increasingly recognize the importance of the <strong>capitalist</strong><br />
in the direction of the firm’s affairs. In the introduction to his influential<br />
book Strong Managers, Weak Owners, Mark Roe (1994, p. vii) makes the<br />
point succinctly:<br />
Economic theory once treated the firm as a collection of machinery,<br />
technology, inventory, workers, <strong>and</strong> capital. Dump these inputs<br />
into a black box, stir them up, <strong>and</strong> one got outputs of products<br />
<strong>and</strong> profits. Today, theory sees the firm as more, as a management<br />
structure. e firm succeeds if managers can successfully coordinate<br />
the firm’s activities; it fails if managers cannot effectively<br />
coordinate <strong>and</strong> match people <strong>and</strong> inputs to current technologies<br />
<strong>and</strong> markets. At the very top of the firm are the relationships among<br />
the firm’s shareholders, its directors, <strong>and</strong> its senior managers. If<br />
those relationships are dysfunctional, the firm is more likely to<br />
stumble.<br />
As Roe suggests, the relationships between the firm’s owners (shareholders)<br />
<strong>and</strong> its top managers are centrally important in determining firm performance.<br />
3<br />
3 For surveys of the literature on corporate governance see Gilson (1996); Shleifer <strong>and</strong><br />
Vishny (1997) <strong>and</strong> Zingales (1998).
27<br />
The Contractual Approach<br />
Both the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial perspective <strong>and</strong> the ownership perspective can<br />
be understood from within the “contractual” framework associated with<br />
Coase (1937). In the Coasian framework, as developed <strong>and</strong> exp<strong>and</strong>ed by<br />
Williamson (1975, 1985, 1996), Klein, et al. (1978), Grossman <strong>and</strong> Hart<br />
(1986), Hart <strong>and</strong> Moore (1990), <strong>and</strong> others, the boundary of the firm is<br />
determined by the tradeoff, at the margin, between the relative transaction<br />
costs of external <strong>and</strong> internal exchange. In this sense, firm boundaries<br />
depend not only on technology, but on organizational considerations; that<br />
is, on the costs <strong>and</strong> benefits of various contracting alternatives.<br />
Moreover, economic organization, both internal <strong>and</strong> external, imposes<br />
costs because complex contracts are usually incomplete. e transactioncost<br />
literature makes much of the distinction between complete <strong>and</strong> incomplete<br />
contracts. A complete contract specifies a course of action, a<br />
decision, or terms of trade contingent on every possible future state of affairs.<br />
In textbook models of competitive general equilibrium, all contracts<br />
are assumed to be complete. e future is not known with certainty, but<br />
the probability distributions of all possible future events are known. 4 In an<br />
important sense, the model is “timeless”: all relevant future contingencies<br />
are considered in the ex ante contracting stage, so there are no decisions to<br />
be made as the future unfolds.<br />
e Coasian approach relaxes this assumption <strong>and</strong> holds that complete,<br />
contingent contracts are not always feasible. In a world of “true”<br />
(structural, rather than parametric) uncertainty, the future holds genuine<br />
surprises (Foss, 1993a), <strong>and</strong> this limits the available contracting options. In<br />
simple transactions—for instance, procurement of an off-the-shelf component—uncertainty<br />
may be relatively unimportant, <strong>and</strong> spot-market contracting<br />
works well. For more complex transactions, such as the purchase<br />
<strong>and</strong> installation of specialized equipment, the underlying agreements<br />
will typically be incomplete—the contract will provide remedies for only<br />
some possible future contingencies. 5 One example is a relational contract,<br />
4 What Knight (1921) would describe as “risk,” rather than “uncertainty.”<br />
5 Williamson (1975, 1985, 1996) attributes contractual incompleteness to cognitive<br />
limits or “bounded rationality,” following Simon’s (1961, p. xxiv) interpretation of human<br />
action as “intendedly rational, but only limitedly so.” Other economists are more agnostic,<br />
assuming only that some quantities or outcomes are unobservable (or not verifiable to third
28 <br />
an agreement that describes shared goals <strong>and</strong> a set of general principles<br />
that govern the relationship (Goldberg, 1980). Another is implicit contract—an<br />
agreement that while unstated, is presumably understood by<br />
all sides. 6 Regardless, contractual incompleteness exposes the contracting<br />
parties to certain risks. In particular, investment in relationship-specific<br />
assets exposes agents to a potential “holdup” problem: if circumstances<br />
change, their trading partners may try to expropriate the rents accruing<br />
to the specific assets. Suppose an upstream supplier tailors its equipment<br />
to service a particular customer. After the equipment is in place, the<br />
customer may dem<strong>and</strong> a lower price, knowing that the salvage value of the<br />
specialized equipment is lower than the net payment it offers. Anticipating<br />
this possibility, the supplier will be unwilling to install the custom machinery<br />
without protection for such a contingency, even if the specialized<br />
technology would make the relationship more profitable for both sides.<br />
One way to safeguard rents accruing to specific assets is vertical (or<br />
lateral) integration, where a merger eliminates any adversarial interests.<br />
Less extreme options include long-term contracts (Joskow, 1985, 1987,<br />
1988, 1990), partial ownership agreements (Pisano, Russo, <strong>and</strong> Teece,<br />
1988; Pisano, 1990), or agreements for both parties to invest in offsetting<br />
relationship-specific investments (Heide <strong>and</strong> John, 1988). Overall, parties<br />
may employ several governance structures. e Coasian literature tries to<br />
match the appropriate governance structure with the particular characteristics<br />
of the transaction. 7<br />
Building Blocks of an Austrian Theory of the Firm<br />
Beginning with the basic Coasian or contractual framework, we can add<br />
two elements as building blocks to an Austrian theory of the firm: <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship<br />
<strong>and</strong> economic calculation. Entrepreneurship represents the<br />
bearing of uncertainty. Economic calculation is the tool <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s use<br />
to assess costs <strong>and</strong> expected future benefits. Consider each in turn.<br />
parties, such as the courts), in which case contracts cannot be made contingent on these<br />
variables or outcomes.<br />
6 is is the sense in which Kreps (1990a) underst<strong>and</strong>s “corporate culture.”<br />
7 As noted in chapter 1 above (pp. 18–21), some Austrians have questioned the Coasian,<br />
contractual approach as an appropriate basis for an Austrian theory of the firm. I do<br />
not share these concerns, however, seeing Coase’s framework as a general heuristic that<br />
can accommodate various notions of the origins of internal <strong>and</strong> external transaction costs,<br />
including those emphasized in the Austrian literature.
29<br />
Entrepreneurship<br />
Entrepreneurship, in the Misesian sense, is the act of bearing uncertainty.<br />
In an ever-changing world, decisions must be made based on expectations<br />
of future events. Because production takes time, resources must be invested<br />
before the returns on those investments are realized. If the forecast of<br />
future returns is inaccurate, the expected profits will turn out to be losses.<br />
is is, of course, true not only of financial investors, but of all human<br />
actors. If the future were known with certainty, man would not act, since<br />
his action would not change the future. us, all purposeful human action<br />
carries some risk that the means chosen will not bring about the desired<br />
end. In this sense, all human actors are <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s.<br />
Austrians tend to focus on this kind of pure <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, the<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial aspect of all human behavior. In doing so, however, they<br />
often overlook a particular case of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, the driving force behind<br />
the structure of production: the <strong>capitalist</strong>-<strong>entrepreneur</strong>, who risks his<br />
money capital in anticipation of future events. Kirzner’s (1973; 1979) influential<br />
interpretation of Mises identifies “alertness” or “discovery,” rather<br />
than uncertainty bearing, as the defining property of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship. In<br />
Kirzner’s framework, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial profit is the reward to superior alertness<br />
to profit opportunities. e simplest case is that of the arbitrageur,<br />
who discovers a discrepancy in present prices that can be exploited for<br />
financial gain. In a more typical case, the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> is alert to a new<br />
product or a superior production process <strong>and</strong> steps in to fill this market<br />
gap before others.<br />
Kirzner’s formulation has been criticized, however, for a lack of attention<br />
to uncertainty. According to this criticism, mere alertness to a<br />
profit opportunity is not sufficient for earning profits. To reap financial<br />
gain, the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> must invest resources to realize the discovered profit<br />
opportunity. “Entrepreneurial ideas without money are mere parlor games<br />
until the money is obtained <strong>and</strong> committed to the projects” (Rothbard,<br />
1985, p. 283). Moreover, excepting the few cases where buying low <strong>and</strong><br />
selling high are nearly instantaneous (say, electronic trading of currencies<br />
or commodity futures), even arbitrage transactions require some time to<br />
complete. e selling price may fall before the arbitrageur has made his<br />
sale, <strong>and</strong> thus even the pure arbitrageur faces some probability of loss. In<br />
Kirzner’s formulation, the worst that can happen to an <strong>entrepreneur</strong> is the
30 <br />
failure to discover an existing profit opportunity. Entrepreneurs either earn<br />
profits or break even, but it is unclear how they suffer losses. 8<br />
Mises, by contrast, consistently identifies <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship with both<br />
profit <strong>and</strong> loss. “ere is a simple rule of thumb to tell <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s<br />
from non-<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s. e <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s are those on whom the incidence<br />
of losses on the capital employed falls” (Mises, 1951, p. 112). Moreover,<br />
while Mises indeed acknowledges the element of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship<br />
in all human action, it is clear that the potential losses of the <strong>capitalist</strong><strong>entrepreneur</strong>s<br />
are particularly important:<br />
Mises applies the concept of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> to all cases of uncertainty-bearing,<br />
<strong>and</strong> since laborers face uncertainty in deciding<br />
where to move or what occupation to go into, laborers are also<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s. But the most important case of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship,<br />
the driving force in shaping the actual structure <strong>and</strong> patterns of production<br />
in the market economy, are the <strong>capitalist</strong>-<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s,<br />
the ones who commit <strong>and</strong> risk their capital in deciding when, what,<br />
<strong>and</strong> how much to produce. e <strong>capitalist</strong>s, too, are far more subject<br />
to actual monetary losses than are the laborers. (Rothbard, 1985,<br />
p. 282) 9<br />
Mises is careful to distinguish <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship from management,<br />
the carrying out of those tasks specified by the <strong>capitalist</strong>-<strong>entrepreneur</strong>.<br />
“[T]hose who confuse <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship <strong>and</strong> management close their eyes<br />
to the economic problem” (Mises, 1949, p. 704). It is the <strong>capitalist</strong>-<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s<br />
who control the allocation of capital to the various branches of<br />
industry.<br />
It is clear from this formulation that the <strong>capitalist</strong>-<strong>entrepreneur</strong> must<br />
own property. He cannot invest without prior ownership of financial<br />
capital. (1871, pp. 159–61) treatment of production includes as <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
functions economic calculation, the “act of will,” <strong>and</strong> “supervision<br />
of the execution of the production plan.” ese functions “entail property<br />
ownership <strong>and</strong>, therefore, mark the Mengerian <strong>entrepreneur</strong> as a <strong>capitalist</strong><strong>entrepreneur</strong>”<br />
(Salerno, 1999a, p. 30). Menger describes “comm<strong>and</strong> of the<br />
services of capital” as a “necessary prerequisite” for economic activity. Even<br />
in large firms, although he may employ “several helpers,” the <strong>entrepreneur</strong><br />
himself continues to bear uncertainty, perform economic calculation, <strong>and</strong><br />
8 See chapter 5 below for further discussion of this point.<br />
9 Of course, bondholders, as well as equity holders, are partly <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s, since even<br />
bondholders bear some default risk.
31<br />
supervise production, even if these functions “are ultimately confined . . .<br />
to determining the allocation of portions of wealth to particular productive<br />
purposes only by general categories, <strong>and</strong> to selection <strong>and</strong> control of<br />
persons” (Menger, 1871, pp. 160–61; quoted in Salerno 1999a, p. 30). 10<br />
An Austrian theory of the firm, then, is essentially a theory about the<br />
ownership <strong>and</strong> use of capital. As Yu (1999, p. 7) puts it, “the Austrian<br />
firm is a collection of capital resources.”<br />
Unfortunately, the Austrian literature on the firm often confuses<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship with innovation, strategic planning, leadership, <strong>and</strong><br />
other functions more properly associated with management than ownership.<br />
Witt (1998), for example, describes <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship as a form<br />
of “cognitive leadership.” Witt outlines a potential Austrian theory of the<br />
firm by combining recent literature on cognitive psychology with Kirzner’s<br />
concept of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship. Entrepreneurs require complementary factors<br />
of production, he argues, which are coordinated within the firm. For<br />
the firm to be successful, the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> must establish a tacit, shared<br />
framework of goals—what the management literature terms “leadership.”<br />
A proper Austrian theory of the firm, then, must take account of the ways<br />
in which <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s communicate their business conceptions within<br />
the organization.<br />
e problem with this argument is that while organizational leadership<br />
is undoubtedly important, it is not particularly “<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial.”<br />
Entrepreneurship has little necessarily to do with having a business plan,<br />
communicating a “corporate culture,” or other dimensions of business<br />
leadership; these are attributes of the successful manager, who may or<br />
may not be an <strong>entrepreneur</strong>. 11 Moreover, even if top-level managerial<br />
skill were the same as <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, it is unclear why “cognitive leadership”—tacit<br />
communication of shared modes of thought, core capabilities,<br />
<strong>and</strong> the like—should be more <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial than other, comparatively<br />
mundane managerial tasks such as structuring incentives, limiting opportunism,<br />
administering rewards, <strong>and</strong> so on.<br />
10 For more on Misesian <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship <strong>and</strong> its various interpretations, see chapter 5<br />
below.<br />
11 One distinction between <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship (as uncertainty bearing) <strong>and</strong> management<br />
is that managerial functions can be purchased on the market: innovation can be outsourced<br />
to R&D labs; strategic planning can be contracted out to consultants; corporate identities,<br />
both internal <strong>and</strong> external, can be developed <strong>and</strong> communicated by outside specialists; <strong>and</strong><br />
so on.
32 <br />
Economic Calculation<br />
All <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s, particularly <strong>capitalist</strong>-<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s, use economic calculation<br />
as their primary decision-making tool. By economic calculation<br />
we simply mean the use of present prices <strong>and</strong> anticipated future prices to<br />
compare present costs with expected future benefits. In this way, the <strong>entrepreneur</strong><br />
decides what goods <strong>and</strong> services should be produced, <strong>and</strong> what<br />
methods of production should be used to produce them. “e business<br />
of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> is not merely to experiment with new technological<br />
methods, but to select from the multitude of technologically feasible methods<br />
those which are best fit to supply the public in the cheapest way with<br />
the things they are asking for most urgently” (Mises, 1951, p. 110). To<br />
make this selection, the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> must be able to weigh the costs <strong>and</strong><br />
expected benefits of various courses of action.<br />
As discussed in the previous chapter, the need for economic calculation<br />
places ultimate limits on the size of the organization. Indeed, many writers<br />
have recognized the connections between the socialist calculation debate<br />
<strong>and</strong> the problems of internal organization (Montias, 1976; Williamson,<br />
1991c). Kirzner, for example, interprets the costs of internal organization<br />
in terms of Hayek’s knowledge problem:<br />
In a free market, any advantages that may be derived from “central<br />
planning” ... are purchased at the price of an enhanced knowledge<br />
problem. We may expect firms to spontaneously exp<strong>and</strong> to the<br />
point where additional advantages of “central” planning are just<br />
offset by the incremental knowledge difficulties that stem from dispersed<br />
information. (Kirzner, 1992, p. 162)<br />
What, precisely, drives this knowledge problem? e mainstream literature<br />
on the firm focuses mostly on the costs of market exchange, <strong>and</strong><br />
much less on the costs of governing internal exchange. e new research<br />
has yet to produce a fully satisfactory explanation of the limits to firm size<br />
(Williamson, 1985, chap. 6). In Coase’s words, “Why does the <strong>entrepreneur</strong><br />
not organize one less transaction or one more?” Or, more generally,<br />
“Why is not all production carried on in one big firm?” (Coase, 1937,<br />
pp. 393–94). Existing contractual explanations rely on problems of authority<br />
<strong>and</strong> responsibility (Arrow, 1974); incentive distortions caused by<br />
residual ownership rights (Grossman <strong>and</strong> Hart, 1986; Hart <strong>and</strong> Moore,<br />
1990; Hart, 1995); <strong>and</strong> the costs of attempting to reproduce market gov-
33<br />
ernance features within the firm (Williamson, 1985, chap. 6). Rothbard<br />
(1962, pp. 609–16) offered an explanation for the firm’s vertical boundaries<br />
based on Mises’s claim that economic calculation under socialism is<br />
impossible. Rothbard argued that the need for monetary calculation in<br />
terms of actual prices not only explains the failures of central planning<br />
under socialism, but places an upper bound on firm size.<br />
Rothbard’s account begins with the recognition that Mises’s position<br />
on socialist economic calculation is not exclusively, or even primarily,<br />
about socialism, but about the role of prices for capital goods. Entrepreneurs<br />
allocate resources based on their expectations about future prices,<br />
<strong>and</strong> the information contained in present prices. To make profits, they<br />
need information about all prices, not only the prices of consumer goods<br />
but the prices of factors of production. Without markets for capital<br />
goods, these goods can have no prices, <strong>and</strong> hence <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s cannot<br />
make judgments about the relative scarcities of these factors. In any<br />
environment, then—socialist or not—where a factor of production has<br />
no market price, a potential user of that factor will be unable to make<br />
rational decisions about its use. Stated this way, Mises’s claim is simply that<br />
efficient resource allocation in a market economy requires well-functioning<br />
asset markets. To have such markets, factors of production must be<br />
privately owned.<br />
Rothbard’s contribution, described more fully in chapter 1 above, was<br />
to generalize Mises’s analysis of this problem under socialism to the context<br />
of vertical integration <strong>and</strong> the size of the organization. Rothbard writes<br />
in Man, Economy, <strong>and</strong> State that up to a point, the size of the firm is<br />
determined by costs, as in the textbook model. However, “the ultimate<br />
limits are set on the relative size of the firm by the necessity for markets to<br />
exist in every factor, in order to make it possible for the firm to calculate<br />
its profits <strong>and</strong> losses” (Rothbard, 1962, p. 599).<br />
Consider, for example, a large, integrated firm organized into semiautonomous<br />
profit centers, each specializing in a particular final or intermediate<br />
product. e central management of the firm uses the implicit<br />
incomes of the business units, as reflected in statements of divisional profit<br />
<strong>and</strong> loss, to allocate physical <strong>and</strong> financial capital across the divisions.<br />
To compute divisional profits <strong>and</strong> losses, the firm needs an economically<br />
meaningful transfer price for all internally transferred goods <strong>and</strong> services. If<br />
there is an external market for the component, the firm can use that market
34 <br />
price as the transfer price. Without a market price, however, the transfer<br />
price must be estimated, either on a cost-plus basis or by bargaining between<br />
the buying <strong>and</strong> selling divisions (Gabor, 1984; Eccles <strong>and</strong> White,<br />
1988; King, 1994). Such estimated transfer prices contain less information<br />
than actual market prices.<br />
e use of internally traded intermediate goods for which no external<br />
market reference is available thus introduces distortions that reduce<br />
organizational efficiency. is gives us the element missing from contemporary<br />
theories of economic organization, an upper bound: the firm is<br />
constrained by the need for external markets for all internally traded goods.<br />
In other words, no firm can become so large that it is both the unique<br />
producer <strong>and</strong> user of an intermediate product; for then no market-based<br />
transfer prices will be available, <strong>and</strong> the firm will be unable to calculate divisional<br />
profit <strong>and</strong> loss <strong>and</strong> therefore unable to allocate resources correctly<br />
between divisions. Of course, internal organization does avoid the holdup<br />
problem, which the firm would face if there were a unique outside supplier;<br />
conceivably, this benefit could outweigh the increase in “incalculability”<br />
(Rothbard, 1962, p. 614). Usually, however, the costs from the loss of<br />
calculation will likely exceed the costs of external governance. 12<br />
Like Kirzner (1992), Rothbard viewed his contribution as consistent<br />
with the basic Coasian framework, noting that his treatment of the limits<br />
of the firm “serves to extend the notable analysis of Professor Coase on<br />
the market determinants of the size of the firm, or the relative extent of<br />
corporate planning within the firm as against the use of exchange <strong>and</strong><br />
the price mechanism. . . . e costs of internal corporate planning become<br />
prohibitive as soon as markets for capital goods begin to disappear, so that<br />
the free-market optimum will always stop well short not only of One Big<br />
Firm throughout the world market but also of any disappearance of specific<br />
markets <strong>and</strong> hence of economic calculation in that product or resource”<br />
(Rothbard, 1976, p. 76). “Central planning” within the firm, then, is<br />
12 Similarly, Rothbard’s claim is not that because external prices are necessary for large<br />
firms to function efficiently, firms will tend to become large where external markets are<br />
“thick” or better developed. On the contrary, large firms typically arise precisely where<br />
external markets are poorly developed or hampered by government intervention; these are<br />
the kinds of circumstances that give <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s an advantage in coordinating activities<br />
internally (Ch<strong>and</strong>ler, 1977). However, such firms are still constrained by the need for some<br />
external market reference.
35<br />
possible only when the firm exists within a larger market setting.<br />
Capital Markets<br />
If the <strong>capitalist</strong>-<strong>entrepreneur</strong> is the driving force behind the industrialized,<br />
market economy, then economists should focus their attention on the<br />
financial markets, the <strong>capitalist</strong>-<strong>entrepreneur</strong>’s main venue. It is here that<br />
this most important form of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship takes place. Of course, in<br />
the traditional, production-function theory of the firm, capital markets<br />
do little but supply financial capital to managers, who can get as much<br />
capital as they wish at the going market price. In a more sophisticated<br />
underst<strong>and</strong>ing, managers do not decide how much capital they want; <strong>capitalist</strong>s<br />
decide where capital should be allocated. In doing so, they provide<br />
essential discipline to the plant-level manager, whom Mises (1949, p. 301)<br />
calls the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>’s “junior partner.”<br />
When <strong>capitalist</strong>s supply resources to firms, they usually delegate to<br />
managers the day-to-day responsibility for use of those resources. Managers<br />
may thus be able to use those resources to benefit themselves, rather<br />
than the <strong>capitalist</strong>. e problem of managerial discretion—what we now<br />
call the principal-agent problem—occupies much current research in the<br />
theory of the firm. Under what conditions can managers exercise discretionary<br />
behavior? What kinds of rules, or mechanisms, can be designed<br />
to align the manager’s interest with the owner’s? Without effective rules,<br />
what actions will managers choose? An early application was the proposed<br />
“separation of ownership <strong>and</strong> control” in the modern corporation. Berle<br />
<strong>and</strong> Means (1932) argued that the modern firm is run not by its owners,<br />
the shareholders, but by salaried managers, whose interests are different<br />
from those of shareholders <strong>and</strong> include executive perks, prestige, <strong>and</strong> similar<br />
rewards. If the corporation is diffusely held, no individual shareholder<br />
has sufficient motivation to engage in (costly) monitoring managerial decisions,<br />
<strong>and</strong> therefore discretion will flourish at the expense of the market<br />
value of the firm. However, Berle <strong>and</strong> Means did not consider how owners<br />
might limit this discretion ex ante, without the need for detailed ex post<br />
monitoring.<br />
Agency theory—now the st<strong>and</strong>ard language of corporate finance—addresses<br />
these problems. As developed by Jensen <strong>and</strong> Meckling (1976);<br />
Fama (1980); Fama <strong>and</strong> Jensen (1983), <strong>and</strong> Jensen (1986), agency theory
36 <br />
studies the design of ex ante incentive-compatible mechanisms to reduce<br />
agency costs in the face of potential moral hazard (malfeasance) by agents.<br />
Agency costs are defined by Jensen <strong>and</strong> Meckling (1976, p. 308) as the<br />
sum of “(1) the monitoring expenditures of the principal, (2) the bonding<br />
expenditures by the agent, <strong>and</strong> (3) the residual loss.” e residual loss<br />
represents the potential gains from trade that fail to be realized because<br />
perfect incentives for agents cannot be provided when the agent’s actions<br />
are unobservable. In a typical agency model, a principal assigns an agent to<br />
do some task (producing output, for instance), but has only an imperfect<br />
signal of the agent’s performance (for example, effort). e agency problem<br />
is analogous to the signal-extraction problem popularized in macroeconomics<br />
by Lucas (1972): how much of the observable outcome is due<br />
to the agent’s effort, <strong>and</strong> how much is due to factors beyond the agent’s<br />
control? e optimal incentive contract balances the principal’s desire to<br />
provide incentives to increase the agent’s effort (for example, by basing<br />
compensation on the outcome) with the agent’s desire to be insured from<br />
the fluctuations in compensation that come from these r<strong>and</strong>om factors.<br />
Owners of corporations (shareholders) use a variety of control or governance<br />
mechanisms to limit the managerial discretion described by Berle<br />
<strong>and</strong> Means. Both “internal” <strong>and</strong> “external” governance may be employed.<br />
Internally, owners may establish a board of directors to oversee the actions<br />
of managers. ey can use performance-based compensation to motivate<br />
managers to act in the owners’ interest (for instance, giving managers<br />
stock options instead of cash bonuses). ey can adopt a particular organizational<br />
form, such as the “M-form” structure, in which managerial<br />
discretion is more easily kept in check (Williamson, 1975). Finally, they<br />
can rely on competition within the firm for top-level management positions—what<br />
Fama (1980) calls the internal market for managers—to limit<br />
the discretionary behavior of top-level management.<br />
Even more important are external forces that help align managers’<br />
interests with those of shareholders. Competition in the product market,<br />
for example, assures that firms whose managers engage in too much discretionary<br />
behavior will fail, costing the managers their jobs. In countries<br />
where universal banking is permitted, large equity holders such as banks<br />
can exercise considerable influence over managerial behavior. e external<br />
governance mechanism that has received the most attention, however, is<br />
the market for ownership itself, the “market for corporate control.”
37<br />
Henry Manne’s essay, “Mergers <strong>and</strong> the Market for Corporate Control”<br />
(1965), responded to Berle <strong>and</strong> Means by noting that managerial<br />
discretion will be limited if there is an active market for control of corporations.<br />
When managers engage in discretionary behavior, the share price<br />
of the firm falls, <strong>and</strong> this invites takeover <strong>and</strong> subsequent replacement of<br />
incumbent management. erefore, while managers may hold considerable<br />
autonomy over the day-to-day operations of the firm, the stock market<br />
places strict limits on their behavior.<br />
e central insight of Manne’s paper is also found in Mises’s Human<br />
Action (1949), in the passage distinguishing what Mises calls “profit management”<br />
from “bureaucratic management” (pp. 300–07). It is true, Mises<br />
acknowledges, that the salaried managers of a corporation hold considerable<br />
autonomy over the day-to-day operations of the firm. Nonetheless,<br />
the shareholders make the ultimate decisions about allocating resources to<br />
the firm, in their decisions to buy <strong>and</strong> sell stock:<br />
[e Berle–Means] doctrine disregards entirely the role that the<br />
capital <strong>and</strong> money market, the stock <strong>and</strong> bond exchange, which<br />
a pertinent idiom simply calls the “market,” plays in the direction<br />
of corporate business.... [T]he changes in the prices of common<br />
<strong>and</strong> preferred stock <strong>and</strong> of corporate bonds are the means applied<br />
by the <strong>capitalist</strong>s for the supreme control of the flow of capital.<br />
e price structure as determined by the speculations on the capital<br />
<strong>and</strong> money markets <strong>and</strong> on the big commodity exchanges not only<br />
decides how much capital is available for the conduct of each corporation’s<br />
business; it creates a state of affairs to which the managers<br />
must adjust their operations in detail. (Mises, 1949, p. 303)<br />
Mises does not identify the takeover mechanism per se as a means for<br />
<strong>capitalist</strong>s to exercise control—takeovers were much less popular before<br />
the late 1950s, when the tender offer began to replace the proxy contest<br />
as the acquisition method of choice—but the main point is clear: the true<br />
basis of the market system is not the product market, the labor market,<br />
or the managerial market, but the capital market, where <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
judgments are exercised <strong>and</strong> decisions carried out.<br />
Toward an Austrian Theory of Corporate Governance<br />
Given that financial-market <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship is the defining feature of a<br />
market economy, that economic calculation is the <strong>capitalist</strong>-<strong>entrepreneur</strong>’s
38 <br />
primary tool, <strong>and</strong> that economic calculation requires well-functioning<br />
capital markets, what can <strong>capitalist</strong>-<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s do to govern their relationships<br />
with operational managers? What should be the basis of<br />
an Austrian theory of corporate governance? is section suggests four<br />
areas that Austrians should address: (1) the concept of the firm as an<br />
investment; (2) the relationship between internal <strong>and</strong> external capital<br />
markets; (3) comparative corporate governance; <strong>and</strong> (4) financiers as<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s. Consider each in turn.<br />
Firms as Investments<br />
Because the owner, <strong>and</strong> not the manager, is the ultimate decision-maker,<br />
the Austrian theory of the firm should comprise two elements: a theory<br />
of investment (corporate finance), <strong>and</strong> a theory of how investors provide<br />
incentives for managers to use these resources efficiently (corporate governance).<br />
In microeconomics textbooks, by contrast, what the capital<br />
investors give to the firm is treated as just another factor of production. Its<br />
price, the “rental price of capital” or interest, is simply another cost to the<br />
producer. Any excess of revenues over costs, including the cost of capital,<br />
goes to the manager (sometimes confusingly called the “<strong>entrepreneur</strong>”).<br />
is residual is called “profit,” though it is not profit in the Misesian sense.<br />
In the ownership perspective, as developed by Gabor <strong>and</strong> Pearce (1952,<br />
1958), Vickers (1970, 1987), Moroney (1972), <strong>and</strong> others, the firm is<br />
viewed as an investment. e firm’s goal is to maximize the return on<br />
invested capital. is money capital may be regarded as a factor of production,<br />
but it is a unique factor, the “controlling” factor that receives<br />
the net proceeds of the operation. Other factors, such as labor (including<br />
management) <strong>and</strong> physical capital, are regarded as “contracting” factors<br />
that receive a fixed payment. e services of the top-level manager are thus<br />
treated as a cost, while the investor is considered the residual claimant. Also<br />
note that because the <strong>capitalist</strong> bears the risk that the investment will fail,<br />
upon investing the <strong>capitalist</strong> has become an <strong>entrepreneur</strong>. Furthermore,<br />
to the extent that the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> (as Kirznerian discoverer) hires himself<br />
out to the <strong>capitalist</strong> as a salaried manager, his compensation is not <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
profit; it is a cost to the owner of the firm (Rothbard, 1985,<br />
p. 283). is has significant implications for firm behavior. First, the firm
39<br />
will not always exp<strong>and</strong> output to the point where marginal revenue equals<br />
marginal cost. For if the firm is earning positive net returns at its current<br />
level of output, instead of increasing output until marginal net returns<br />
fall to zero, the firm could simply take those returns <strong>and</strong> employ them<br />
elsewhere, either to set up a new firm in the same industry or to diversify<br />
into a new industry (Gabor <strong>and</strong> Pearce, 1952, p. 253). e efficient scale of<br />
production is determined by outside investment opportunities, not simply<br />
the marginal returns from producing a single output.<br />
Indeed, it is easy to show that under fairly weak assumptions, the<br />
output level that maximizes the profit rate is less than the output level<br />
that maximizes the level of profit. Consider a st<strong>and</strong>ard, concave profit<br />
function; add a “money capital requirement,” the amount of capital required<br />
to finance a given level of output. As long as the money capital<br />
requirement is increasing in output, the output level that maximizes the<br />
profit rate—profit divided by the money capital required to finance that<br />
output level—is less than the output level that maximizes profit. From the<br />
<strong>capitalist</strong>’s perspective, output should be exp<strong>and</strong>ed to the point where the<br />
return on the last dollar of money capital is just equal to the opportunity<br />
cost of that last dollar of money capital. But as long as the plant manager is<br />
not free to invest his financial capital elsewhere, the manager’s cost curves<br />
do not reflect this opportunity cost. Hence, the manager chooses a higher<br />
output level than that which maximizes the <strong>capitalist</strong>’s return.<br />
Significantly, for internal accounting purposes, firms are typically<br />
structured such that the goal of any operating unit is to maximize the<br />
return on its invested capital. In fact, not only do firms set up divisions as<br />
profit centers, as discussed above, but groups of profit centers are frequently<br />
grouped together as “investment centers” within the firm itself. Reece<br />
<strong>and</strong> Cool (1978) studied 620 of the largest US firms in 1978 <strong>and</strong> found<br />
that seventy-four percent had investment centers. ese subunits are<br />
commonly evaluated according to a return on investment (ROI) criterion,<br />
such as the ratio of accounting net income generated by the investment<br />
center divided by total assets invested in the investment center. More<br />
recently, measures such as residual income <strong>and</strong> “economic value added”<br />
(EVA) have become popular as an alternative to ROI (Stern, Stewart, <strong>and</strong><br />
Chew, 1995). e point is that individual divisions are being evaluated<br />
on the same basis as the corporation itself—namely, what kind of return
40 <br />
is being generated on the financial resources invested.<br />
Second, the firm-as-investment concept relates closely to an emerging<br />
literature on merger as a form of firm-level investment (Bittlingmayer,<br />
1996; Andrade <strong>and</strong> Stafford, 2004). Once managers have acquired financial<br />
resources from <strong>capitalist</strong>s, these managers have some discretion<br />
over how to invest those resources. To supplement the “normal” forms<br />
of firm-level investment—capital expenditures <strong>and</strong> R&D—managers may<br />
choose to purchase assets of existing firms through merger. Merger may<br />
be a different form of investment; Andrade <strong>and</strong> Stafford (2004) find, for<br />
example, that mergers in particular industries tend to be clustered over<br />
time, while rankings of non-merger forms of investment by industry tend<br />
to remain constant. is suggests that merger activity is encouraged by specific<br />
industry or policy shocks, like deregulation, the emergence of junkbond<br />
financing, <strong>and</strong> increased foreign competition (Mitchell <strong>and</strong> Mulherin,<br />
1996). Nonetheless, mergers will be evaluated by the returns they<br />
generate, just like any other investment.<br />
Internal Capital Markets<br />
In his extension of the Coasian framework, Williamson (1975, 1981)<br />
describes the modern multidivisional or “M-form” corporation as a means<br />
of intra-firm capital allocation. Capital markets allocate resources between<br />
st<strong>and</strong>-alone, single-product firms. In the diversified, multidivisional<br />
firm, by contrast, resources are allocated internally, as the <strong>entrepreneur</strong><br />
distributes funds among profit-center divisions. is “internal capital<br />
market” replicates the allocative <strong>and</strong> disciplinary roles of the financial<br />
markets, shifting resources toward more profitable lines of production. 13<br />
Coase claimed that firms “supplant” markets when the transaction costs<br />
13 Such a process is described explicitly in the 1977 Annual Report of Fuqua Industries,<br />
a diversified firm with interests in lawn <strong>and</strong> garden equipment, sports <strong>and</strong> recreation,<br />
entertainment, photofinishing, transportation, housing, <strong>and</strong> food <strong>and</strong> beverages:<br />
Fuqua’s strategy is to allocate resources into business segments having<br />
prospects of the highest return on investment <strong>and</strong> to extract resources from<br />
areas where the future return on investment does not meet our ongoing<br />
requirements.... e same principle of exp<strong>and</strong>ing areas of high return<br />
<strong>and</strong> shrinking areas of low return is constantly extended to product lines<br />
<strong>and</strong> markets within individual Fuqua operations. Only with a diversified<br />
business structure is the application of this modern fundamental business<br />
investment policy practical.
41<br />
of market exchange exceed those of internal production. Williamson adds<br />
that diversified, multidivisional firms “supplant” capital markets when the<br />
costs of external finance exceed those of internal resource allocation.<br />
According to the internal capital markets theory, diversified firms arise<br />
when limits in the capital market permit internal management to allocate<br />
<strong>and</strong> manage funds more efficiently than the external capital market. ese<br />
efficiencies may come from several sources. First, the central headquarters<br />
of the firm (HQ) typically has access to information unavailable to<br />
external parties, which it extracts through its own internal auditing <strong>and</strong><br />
reporting procedures (Williamson, 1975, pp. 145–47). 14 Second, managers<br />
inside the firm may also be more willing to reveal information to<br />
HQ than to outsiders, since revealing the same information to the capital<br />
market would also reveal it to rival firms, potentially hurting the firm’s<br />
competitive position. ird, HQ can also intervene selectively, making<br />
marginal changes to divisional operating procedures, whereas the external<br />
market can discipline a division only by raising or lowering the share price<br />
of the entire firm. Fourth, HQ has residual rights of control that providers<br />
of outside finance do not have, making it easier to redeploy the assets<br />
of poorly performing divisions (Gertner, Scharfstein, <strong>and</strong> Stein, 1994).<br />
More generally, these control rights allow HQ to add value by engaging in<br />
“winner picking” among competing projects when credit to the firm as a<br />
whole is constrained (Stein, 1997). Fifth, the internal capital market may<br />
react more “rationally” to new information: those who dispense the funds<br />
need only take into account their own expectations about the returns to<br />
a particular investment, <strong>and</strong> not their expectations about other investors’<br />
expectations. Hence there would be no speculative bubbles or waves.<br />
Bhidé (1990) uses the internal capital markets framework to explain<br />
both the conglomerate merger wave of the 1960s <strong>and</strong> the divestitures of<br />
the 1980s, regarding these developments as responses to changes in the<br />
relative efficiencies of internal <strong>and</strong> external finance. For instance, corporate<br />
refocusing can be explained as a consequence of the rise of takeover by<br />
Another highly diversified firm, Bangor Punta Corporation, explains that the role of its<br />
corporate headquarters is “to act as a central bank supplying operating units with working<br />
capital <strong>and</strong> capital funds” (1966 Annual Report).<br />
14 Myers <strong>and</strong> Majluf (1984) show that if the information asymmetry between a st<strong>and</strong>alone<br />
firm <strong>and</strong> potential outside investors is large enough, the firm may forego investments<br />
with positive net present value rather than issue risky securities to finance them.
42 <br />
tender offer rather than proxy contest, the emergence of new financial techniques<br />
<strong>and</strong> instruments like leveraged buyouts <strong>and</strong> high-yield bonds, <strong>and</strong><br />
the appearance of takeover <strong>and</strong> breakup specialists, like Kohlberg Kravis<br />
Roberts, which themselves performed many functions of the conglomerate<br />
HQ (Williamson, 1992). Furthermore, the emergence of the conglomerate<br />
in the 1960s can itself be traced to the emergence of the M-form<br />
corporation. Because the multidivisional structure treats business units<br />
as semi-independent profit or investment centers, it is much easier for<br />
an M-form corporation to exp<strong>and</strong> via acquisition than it is for the older<br />
unitary structure. New acquisitions can be integrated smoothly when they<br />
can preserve much of their internal structure <strong>and</strong> retain control over dayto-day<br />
operations. In this sense, the conglomerate could emerge only<br />
after the multidivisional structure had been diffused widely throughout<br />
the corporate sector.<br />
Internal capital market advantages, then, explain why diversification<br />
can increase the value of the firm. During the 1960s, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s took<br />
advantage of financial-market imperfections (many due to regulatory interference)<br />
to form large, highly diversified firms (Hubbard <strong>and</strong> Palia, 1999;<br />
Klein, 2001). ey also benefited from government spending in hightechnology<br />
<strong>and</strong> other defense-related businesses, which were particularly<br />
suited for acquisition. In the two subsequent decades, financial-market<br />
performance improved, reducing the internal capital market advantages of<br />
conglomerate firms.<br />
If <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s have a special ability to manage information <strong>and</strong> allocate<br />
financial resources within the firm—if diversified firms “supplant”<br />
external capital markets—then why are capital markets necessary at all?<br />
Why not, to paraphrase Coase’s (1937, pp. 393–94) second question, organize<br />
the entire economy as one giant conglomerate? e answer is that<br />
the argument for internal capital market advantages does not “scale up”; it<br />
applies only to firms that are themselves engaged in rivalrous competition.<br />
is situation, in turn, implies strict limits to firm size, even for large<br />
conglomerates.<br />
e argument for the efficiency of internal capital markets is that compared<br />
with outside investors, the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> can extract additional information<br />
about divisional requirements <strong>and</strong> performance. It is not that<br />
the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>’s knowledge substitutes for the knowledge embodied in<br />
market prices. To evaluate the merit of a proposed investment, the central
43<br />
management of a diversified conglomerate still relies on market prices to<br />
calculate expected (money) benefits <strong>and</strong> cost. Internal accounting does not<br />
substitute for money prices; it merely uses the information contained in<br />
prices in a particular way. When capital-goods prices are distorted—for<br />
example, because of financial market regulation—then the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>’s<br />
additional knowledge is that much more valuable. So under those conditions<br />
we would expect an increase in M-form corporations, allocating<br />
resources via internal capital markets. During the 1960s, that is exactly<br />
what we observed.<br />
Correctly understood, the internal capital markets hypothesis does not<br />
state that internal capital markets supplant financial markets. It states<br />
that internal capital markets supplement financial markets. Even ITT’s<br />
Harold Geneen, LTV’s James Ling, Litton’s “Tex” ornton, <strong>and</strong> the other<br />
conglomerators of the 1960s were constrained by the need for economic<br />
calculation in terms of money prices. ornton’s “Whiz Kids” have been<br />
criticized for their advocacy of “scientific management” or “management<br />
by the numbers.” Yet ornton’s techniques were quite successful at Litton.<br />
It was only when his disciple Robert McNamara tried to apply the same<br />
techniques to a nonmarket setting—the Vietnam War—that the limitations<br />
of “scientific management” were revealed. 15<br />
Comparative Corporate Governance<br />
How well do various systems of corporate governance function? e last<br />
few years have seen the growth of a new literature on “comparative corporate<br />
governance,” the study of alternative means of governing relations<br />
between firm owners <strong>and</strong> managers. e typical comparison is between<br />
stock-market systems like those in the US <strong>and</strong> UK, <strong>and</strong> bank-centered systems<br />
like those in Germany <strong>and</strong> Japan (Roe, 1994; Gilson <strong>and</strong> Black, 1998;<br />
Milhaupt, 1997). According to Roe, the phenomenon he calls “strong<br />
managers, weak owners” is an outgrowth not of the market process, but of<br />
legal restrictions on firm ownership <strong>and</strong> control. In the US, for example,<br />
banks <strong>and</strong> other institutions are forbidden from owning firms; antitrust<br />
laws prohibit industrial combinations like the Japanese keiretsu; <strong>and</strong> antitakeover<br />
restrictions dilute the effects of the takeover mechanism. Laws<br />
that require diffuse ownership create what Roe terms the “Berle–Means<br />
15 For more on the relationship between ornton <strong>and</strong> McNamara, see Shapley (1993),<br />
<strong>and</strong> Byrne (1993).
44 <br />
corporation,” in which “fragmented ownership shifts power in the firm to<br />
managers” (p. 93).<br />
Mises makes a very similar argument in Human Action. ere he<br />
notes that “the emergence of an omnipotent managerial class is not a phenomenon<br />
of the unhampered market economy,” but a result of government<br />
policy (Mises, 1949, p. 304). Here he exp<strong>and</strong>s upon his earlier<br />
analysis in Bureaucracy (1944, p. 12), where he attacks the claim that bureaucracy<br />
follows naturally from firm size. Mises conceives of bureaucracy<br />
as rule-following, as opposed to profit-seeking, behavior. He reserves the<br />
term “bureaucratic management” for the governing of activities that have<br />
no cash value on the market. As long as a firm’s inputs <strong>and</strong> outputs are<br />
bought <strong>and</strong> sold, the central management of the firm will have the information<br />
provided by market prices to evaluate the efficiency of the various<br />
branches <strong>and</strong> divisions within the firm. en subordinate managers can<br />
be given wide discretion to make daily operational decisions without the<br />
pursuit of profit. 16 If an organization produces a good or service that has<br />
no market price—the output of a government agency, for example—then<br />
subordinate managers must be given specific instructions for how to perform<br />
their tasks.<br />
e fact that managers in a private firm have latitude to make dayto-day<br />
decisions, Mises argues, does not make the firm “bureaucratic.”<br />
“No profit-seeking enterprise, no matter how large, is liable to become<br />
bureaucratic provided the h<strong>and</strong>s of its management are not tied by government<br />
interference. e trend toward bureaucratic rigidity is not inherent<br />
in the evolution of business. It is an outcome of government meddling<br />
with business” (Mises, 1944, p. 12). By this Mises means that government<br />
interference impedes the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>’s use of economic calculation <strong>and</strong><br />
the attempt to use prices to impose managerial discipline. Mises gives three<br />
examples (pp. 64–73): taxes <strong>and</strong> price regulations that interfere with corporate<br />
profits (distorting an important signal of managerial performance);<br />
16 Chapter 1 of Bureaucracy, on profit management <strong>and</strong> the sources of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
profit, contains a remarkably lucid account of economic calculation under capitalism <strong>and</strong><br />
its impossibility under socialism. “To the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> of <strong>capitalist</strong> society a factor of<br />
production through its price sends out a warning: Don’t touch me, I am earmarked for<br />
another, more urgent need. But under socialism these factors of production are mute”<br />
(Mises, 1944, p. 29). Mises also provides a very Coase-like discussion of the make-or-buy<br />
decision, though without citation (p. 33).
45<br />
laws that interfere with hiring <strong>and</strong> promotion (including the need to hire<br />
public relations staffs <strong>and</strong> legal <strong>and</strong> accounting personnel to comply with<br />
government reporting requirements); <strong>and</strong> the omnipresent threat of arbitrary<br />
antitrust or regulatory activity, in response to which <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s<br />
must become adept at “diplomacy <strong>and</strong> bribery” (p. 72). Absent such legal<br />
restrictions, Mises would argue, managerial autonomy is no inefficiency;<br />
it’s an essential tool for operating a large, decentralized organization. But<br />
the firm must have accurate divisional accounting statements to evaluate<br />
managerial performance, <strong>and</strong> for this it needs the information contained<br />
in market prices.<br />
Financiers as Entrepreneurs<br />
As mentioned above, much current research in the theory of the firm<br />
focuses on the agency problem. Under what conditions can managers<br />
exercise discretionary behavior? What kinds of rules, or mechanisms, can<br />
be designed to align the manager’s interest with the owner’s? Without<br />
effective rules, what actions will managers choose? Mises was well aware<br />
of the agency problems, or conflicts of interest, that emerge in organizations<br />
(e.g., Mises, 1944, pp. 42–47). But, as we have seen, he saw the<br />
firm’s owner or owners as playing the primary <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial role, <strong>and</strong><br />
paid special attention to the mechanisms available to owners to limit this<br />
discretion. Financiers, acting in stock <strong>and</strong> bond markets—writing today,<br />
Mises would probably have discussed private-equity markets as well—are<br />
the large firm’s ultimate decision-makers. Rothbard (1962, p. 602) puts it<br />
this way:<br />
Hired managers may successfully direct production or choose production<br />
processes. But the ultimate responsibility <strong>and</strong> control of<br />
production rests inevitably with the owner, with the businessman<br />
whose property the product is until it is sold. It is the owners who<br />
make the decision concerning how much capital to invest <strong>and</strong> in<br />
what particular processes. And particularly, it is the owners who<br />
must choose the managers. e ultimate decisions concerning the<br />
use of their property <strong>and</strong> the choice of the men to manage it must<br />
therefore be made by the owners <strong>and</strong> by no one else.<br />
Kirzner (1973, p. 68) makes a similar point about alertness: it can never<br />
be fully delegated. “It is true that ‘alertness’ . . . may be hired; but one
46 <br />
who hires an employee alert to possibilities of discovering knowledge has<br />
himself displayed alertness of a still higher order. . . . e <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
decision to hire is thus the ultimate hiring decision, responsible in the last<br />
resort for all factors that are directly or indirectly hired for his project.”<br />
Kirzner goes on to quote Knight (1921, p. 291): “What we call ‘control’<br />
consists mainly of selecting someone else to do the ‘controlling.’ ”<br />
Significantly, Mises’s treatment of the importance of financial markets<br />
is key to his final rebuttal in Human Action to Lange, Lerner, <strong>and</strong> the<br />
other market-socialist critics of his calculation argument (Mises, 1949,<br />
pp. 694–711). e market socialists, he argued, fail to underst<strong>and</strong> that the<br />
main task performed by a market system is not the pricing of consumer<br />
goods, but the allocation of capital among various branches of industry.<br />
By focusing on production <strong>and</strong> pricing decisions within a given structure<br />
of capital, the socialists ignore the vital role of capital markets. Rothbard<br />
(1993) notes that the same criticism can be applied to the textbook,<br />
production-function model of the firm, where capital is also taken for<br />
granted. “Neoclassical microtheory talks about ‘managers’ producing up<br />
to the point where MR = MC, without ever talking about who or what<br />
is allocating capital to them. In short, neoclassical firms are implicitly assumed<br />
to have a fixed amount of capital allocated to them . . . <strong>and</strong> they can<br />
only use that capital to invest in their own firm <strong>and</strong> nowhere else. Hence,<br />
the nonsensical conclusion that each firm’s manager will try to squeeze out<br />
the last cent of profit, pushing production until MR = MC.” Fortunately,<br />
the new literature on transaction-cost determinants of contractual relations<br />
has begun to bring capital back into the received microtheory.<br />
Failure to underst<strong>and</strong> the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial role of capital providers<br />
plagues the mainstream literature in corporate finance <strong>and</strong> corporate<br />
control. For example, there is considerable debate about the effectiveness<br />
of the takeover mechanism in providing managerial discipline. If managers<br />
desire acquisitions to increase their own prestige or span of control—to<br />
engage in “empire building”—then an unregulated market will generate<br />
too many takeovers. Merger critics such as Ravenscraft <strong>and</strong> Scherer (1987),<br />
discussed in chapter 3 below, support increased restrictions on takeover<br />
activity. Jensen (1986, 1993) suggests changes in the tax code to favor<br />
dividends <strong>and</strong> share repurchases over direct reinvestment, thus limiting<br />
managers’ ability to channel free cash flow into unproductive acquisitions.
47<br />
However, the fact that some mergers—indeed, many mergers, takeovers,<br />
<strong>and</strong> reorganizations—turn out to be unprofitable does not imply<br />
market failure or necessarily prescribe any policy response. Errors will<br />
always be made in a world of uncertainty. Even the financial markets,<br />
which aggregate the collective wisdom of the <strong>capitalist</strong>-<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s, will<br />
sometimes make the wrong judgment on a particular business transaction.<br />
Sometimes the market will reward, ex ante, a proposed restructuring that<br />
has no efficiency rationale. But this is due not to capital market failure,<br />
but to imperfect knowledge. Final judgments about success <strong>and</strong> failure<br />
can be made only ex post, as the market process plays itself out. Moreover,<br />
there is no reason to believe that courts or regulatory authorities can make<br />
better judgments than the financial markets. e decisions of courts <strong>and</strong><br />
government agencies will, in fact, tend to be far worse: unlike market<br />
participants, judges <strong>and</strong> bureaucrats pursue a variety of private agendas,<br />
unrelated to economic efficiency. Furthermore, the market is quick to<br />
penalize error as it is discovered; no hearings, committees, or fact-finding<br />
commissions are required. In short, that firms often fail is surprising only<br />
to those committed to textbook models of competition in which the very<br />
notion of “failure” is defined away.<br />
Another criticism of the market for corporate control is that unregulated<br />
financial markets engage in too few takeovers, due to a free-rider<br />
problem associated with tender offers (see, for example, Scharfstein 1988).<br />
Critics point out that if the difference between the current (undervalued)<br />
price of the firm <strong>and</strong> its after-takeover market value is common knowledge,<br />
then the target firm’s shareholders will refuse to tender their shares until<br />
the current price is bid up, appropriating a share of the returns to the<br />
acquiring firm. ese critics conclude that regulation, not the takeover<br />
market, should be used to discipline managers.<br />
e flaw in this argument is that it assumes perfect knowledge on<br />
the part of investors. e typical shareholder will not usually have the<br />
same information as incumbent managers, outside “raiders,” <strong>and</strong> other<br />
specialists. It is not in the small shareholder’s interest to learn these details;<br />
that is why he delegates such responsibilities to the managers in the first<br />
place. As Hayek (1945) described it, there is a “division of knowledge” in<br />
society. e raider who perceives <strong>and</strong> exploits a difference between a firm’s<br />
current market value <strong>and</strong> its potential value under new management has<br />
an opportunity for an <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial profit (less the transaction costs of
48 <br />
takeover). Because shareholders have delegated these responsibilities, they<br />
will not usually earn a share of this profit. Nonetheless, as explained above,<br />
because shareholders (owners) choose to delegate operational responsibility<br />
to managers—contracting out for the managerial function—they themselves<br />
retain the ultimate rights of control.<br />
Moreover, the post-takeover market value of the firm is uncertain; the<br />
raider’s profit, if he is successful, is the reward for bearing this uncertainty.<br />
In this sense, the takeover artist is a Misesian <strong>capitalist</strong>-<strong>entrepreneur</strong>. is<br />
account, however, could use further elaboration. For example, how is the<br />
bearing of uncertainty distributed among participants in various forms of<br />
restructuring? How do regulatory barriers hamper the <strong>capitalist</strong>-<strong>entrepreneur</strong>’s<br />
ability to exercise the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial function in this context?<br />
Conclusions<br />
e main message of this chapter is that Austrians can continue to work<br />
within the contractual, or Coasian, approach to the firm in elaborating<br />
the insights discussed above. In particular, the problem of corporate governance,<br />
<strong>and</strong> the corollary view that firms are investments, belongs at the<br />
forefront of Austrian research on the theory of the firm. Emphasis should<br />
thus be placed on the plans <strong>and</strong> actions of the <strong>capitalist</strong>-<strong>entrepreneur</strong>.<br />
A particularly undeveloped area concerns the provision of capital to<br />
small, “<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial” ventures. Most of the literature on governance<br />
focuses on the large corporation, <strong>and</strong> the use of stock <strong>and</strong> bond markets<br />
to govern these organizations. Equally important, however, are smaller,<br />
privately held firms, financed with venture capital or other forms of investment.<br />
So far, the firm-as-investment literature has said little about<br />
these organizations, despite their growing importance, particularly in highgrowth,<br />
technologically-advanced industries like software <strong>and</strong> biotechnology.<br />
Further research in this area is sorely needed.
CHAPTER 3<br />
Do Entrepreneurs Make Predictable Mistakes?<br />
Evidence From Corporate Divestitures †<br />
With S<strong>and</strong>ra K. Klein<br />
After a brief lull in the early 1990s, the market for corporate control became<br />
increasingly active toward the end of the decade. Both 1996 <strong>and</strong><br />
1997 set new records for the number of US merger filings, <strong>and</strong> 1998,<br />
1999, <strong>and</strong> 2000 brought high-profile “mega-mergers” in financial services,<br />
energy, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, <strong>and</strong> automobiles. In banking<br />
alone, for example, a wave of mergers over the last decade has led to<br />
widespread industry restructuring <strong>and</strong> consolidation. While total industry<br />
activity continues to exp<strong>and</strong>, the number of US banks <strong>and</strong> banking organizations<br />
both fell by almost 30 percent between 1988 <strong>and</strong> 1997 (Berger,<br />
Demsetz, <strong>and</strong> Strahan, 1999).<br />
Like other business practices that do not conform to textbook models<br />
of competition, mergers, acquisitions, <strong>and</strong> financial restructurings have<br />
long been viewed with suspicion by some commentators <strong>and</strong> regulatory<br />
† Published originally in Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 4, no. 2 (Summer<br />
2001): 3–25. Reprinted in Nicolai J. Foss <strong>and</strong> Peter G. Klein, eds., Entrepreneurship <strong>and</strong><br />
the Firm: Austrian Perspectives on Economic Organization (Aldershot, UK: Edward Elgar,<br />
2002).<br />
49
50 <br />
authorities. However, the academic literature clearly suggests that corporate<br />
restructurings do, on average, create value. Event studies of acquisitions<br />
consistently find positive average combined returns to acquirer<br />
<strong>and</strong> target shareholders. As summarized by Jensen (1991, p. 15), “the<br />
most careful academic research strongly suggests that takeovers—along<br />
with leveraged restructurings prompted by the threat of takeover—have<br />
generated large gains for shareholders <strong>and</strong> for the economy as a whole.”<br />
ese gains, historically about 8 percent of the combined value of the<br />
merging companies, “represent gains to economic efficiency, not redistribution<br />
between various parties” (Jensen, 1991, p. 23). 1<br />
At the same time, however, several studies have found a sharp divergence<br />
between market participants’ pre-merger expectations about the<br />
post-merger performance of merging firms <strong>and</strong> the firms’ actual performance<br />
rates. Ravenscraft <strong>and</strong> Scherer’s (1987) large-scale study of manufacturing<br />
firms, for example, found that while the share prices of merging<br />
firms did on average rise with the announcement of the proposed restructuring,<br />
post-merger profit rates were unimpressive. Indeed, they find<br />
that nearly one-third of all acquisitions during the 1960s <strong>and</strong> 1970s were<br />
eventually divested. Ravenscraft <strong>and</strong> Scherer conclude that acquisitions,<br />
particularly diversifying acquisitions, typically promote managerial “empire<br />
building” rather than efficiency. While acknowledging that product<br />
<strong>and</strong> capital markets eventually discipline poorly performing firms, forcing<br />
divestitures <strong>and</strong> other restructurings, Ravenscraft <strong>and</strong> Scherer (p. 217)<br />
argue for tighter government restrictions on mergers, particularly diversifying<br />
acquisitions <strong>and</strong> acquisitions financed by stock: “When the roads are<br />
strewn with wrecks, government officials cannot rest content because the<br />
tow trucks, ambulances, <strong>and</strong> hearses are doing a good job removing the<br />
remnants <strong>and</strong> clearing the right-of-way.” 2<br />
Implicit in this criticism is the idea that divestitures of previously ac-<br />
1 On the gains from mergers, acquisitions, <strong>and</strong> other restructurings, see also the surveys<br />
by Jensen <strong>and</strong> Ruback (1983), Jarrell, Brickley, <strong>and</strong> Netter (1988), Roll (1988), Romano<br />
(1992), <strong>and</strong> Andrade, Mitchell, <strong>and</strong> Stafford (2001).<br />
2 Jensen (1986, 1993) argues similarly that diversifying acquisitions resulted from widespread<br />
agency problems in corporations, though he does not recommend any regulatory<br />
response: “e legal/political/regulatory system is far too blunt an instrument to h<strong>and</strong>le the<br />
problems of wasteful managerial behavior effectively” (1993, p. 850). Instead, he advocates<br />
alternative forms of organization such as leveraged buyout associations <strong>and</strong> venture capital<br />
funds (see especially Jensen, 1989).
51<br />
quired assets expose past errors, <strong>and</strong> that these errors should have been<br />
foreseen (<strong>and</strong> perhaps prevented, if regulators had been sufficiently empowered).<br />
Certain types of acquisitions, it is claimed, are more likely to be<br />
later divested, so managers should generally avoid them. If such acquisitions<br />
occur, this is then cited as evidence for widespread agency problems.<br />
In this sense, the takeover wave of the 1980s is typically understood as<br />
an “undoing” of the earlier, conglomerate merger wave of the 1960s <strong>and</strong><br />
early 1970s. According to conventional wisdom, the 1980s was a period<br />
of respecialization or “refocus,” showing the failures of unrelated diversification.<br />
e three decades from 1960 to 1990 thus represent a “round trip<br />
of the American corporation” (Shleifer <strong>and</strong> Vishny, 1991, p. 54).<br />
is view is based partly on evidence from studies of the conglomerate<br />
period by Rumelt (1974, 1982), Ravenscraft <strong>and</strong> Scherer (1987,<br />
1991), Porter (1987), Kaplan <strong>and</strong> Weisbach (1992), <strong>and</strong> others who find<br />
no evidence that unrelated diversification brought long-term benefits to<br />
the firms that diversified. 3 Combined with evidence of negative stockmarket<br />
returns to diversification during the 1980s (Bhagat, Shleifer, <strong>and</strong><br />
Vishny, 1990; Lang <strong>and</strong> Stulz, 1994; Berger <strong>and</strong> Ofek, 1995; Comment<br />
<strong>and</strong> Jarrell, 1995), many observers conclude that unrelated diversification<br />
is per se inefficient, <strong>and</strong> that the conglomerate era is best understood as an<br />
agency phenomenon.<br />
e conventional wisdom on conglomerate sell-offs can be challenged<br />
on at least four grounds. First, divestitures of previously acquired assets<br />
do not necessarily show that the original acquisitions were failures. Weston<br />
(1989) argues that divestitures occur for a variety of reasons, such as<br />
changes in corporate strategies <strong>and</strong> antitrust rules, <strong>and</strong> not necessarily poor<br />
performance. Kaplan <strong>and</strong> Weisbach (1992) studied 217 large acquisitions<br />
completed between 1971 <strong>and</strong> 1982 <strong>and</strong> found that while 43.9 percent<br />
had been divested by 1989, only about a third of those divestitures were<br />
responses to poor post-merger performance. 4 us the mere fact that<br />
3 Servaes (1996) also finds that conglomerate firms in the 1960s were valued at a<br />
discount relative to specialized firms. However, Matsusaka (1993) <strong>and</strong> Hubbard <strong>and</strong><br />
Palia (1999) show that market participants rewarded conglomerate acquisitions during<br />
this period, <strong>and</strong> Klein (2001) offers valuation evidence consistent with the event-study<br />
results.<br />
4 Other empirical studies of asset sales <strong>and</strong> restructurings include Hite, Owens, <strong>and</strong><br />
Rogers (1987); Lang, Poulsen, <strong>and</strong> Stulz (1994); John <strong>and</strong> Ofek (1995); <strong>and</strong> Schlingemann,<br />
Stulz, <strong>and</strong> Walkling (2002). ese papers look at divestitures more generally, <strong>and</strong><br />
not only at divestitures of previously acquired assets.
52 <br />
many acquisitions are later divested does not prove widespread managerial<br />
misconduct.<br />
Second, the market for corporate control is already highly regulated,<br />
<strong>and</strong> it is difficult to draw from current <strong>and</strong> recent experience strong conclusions<br />
about how unhampered capital markets would work. For example,<br />
Ravenscraft <strong>and</strong> Scherer (1987, 1991), Porter (1987), <strong>and</strong> other critics<br />
propose particular sequences of inefficient <strong>and</strong> efficient restructurings: diversifying,<br />
empire-building acquisitions in the 1960s <strong>and</strong> early 1970s, <strong>and</strong><br />
then efficient divestitures in the 1980s. But why did <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s make<br />
systematic mistakes during the conglomerate period, but not later? Can<br />
changes in the legal, political, <strong>and</strong> regulatory environments account for<br />
clusters of errors during specific periods?<br />
ird, even if divestitures are seen as revealing prior mistakes, the<br />
failure of a particular acquisition does not necessarily indicate a failure of<br />
the acquisition strategy. Certain kinds of acquisitions—for example, acquisitions<br />
of firms in knowledge-intensive, high-technology industries—may<br />
be inherently riskier than others. If the returns from a successful integration<br />
of the target’s activities with the firm’s existing activities are sufficiently<br />
high, then the acquisition has positive expected value, even if it is more<br />
likely to fail than a safer acquisition. Matsusaka (2001) offers this kind<br />
of interpretation of corporate diversification. Diversifying acquisitions<br />
represent experiments, as firms try various combinations of businesses,<br />
seeking those that match their capabilities (in the sense of Penrose, 1959;<br />
Nelson <strong>and</strong> Winter, 1982; <strong>and</strong> Wernerfelt, 1984). After learning their<br />
capabilities, firms divest acquisitions that turn out to be poor matches.<br />
In this sense, divestitures reflect successful experiments—the acquirer has<br />
learned that the target’s industry is not a good match for its capabilities.<br />
Such “match-seeking” firms will actively acquire <strong>and</strong> divest over time. 5<br />
5 Sanchez, Heene, <strong>and</strong> omas (1996, p. 28) suggest that the same is true for networks<br />
<strong>and</strong> alliances.<br />
In a dynamic market context, longevity of interfirm alliances is not necessarily<br />
an indicator of successful collaboration. A succession of short-term<br />
alliances by a firm, for example, may suggest that the firm has a superior<br />
ability to learn from its partners, or that it may have superior ability to<br />
quickly reconfigure its chain of firm-addressable resources in response to<br />
changing competitive <strong>and</strong> market conditions.<br />
Mosakowski (1997) also offers an experimentation theory of diversification (without looking<br />
at subsequent divestitures).
53<br />
is chapter elaborates a fourth, “Austrian” interpretation of corporate<br />
divestitures, one that builds on the three just mentioned. Austrian<br />
writers view market competition as a dynamic, rivalrous process that unfolds<br />
gradually through time—a “discovery procedure,” in Hayek’s (1978)<br />
famous phrase. e future holds genuine surprises, not merely a closed<br />
set of events whose probabilities are unknown. From this perspective,<br />
the long-term success of an acquisition, like any <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial action,<br />
cannot be “predicted.” Entrepreneurs rely on judgment, or what Mises<br />
(1949) calls underst<strong>and</strong>ing. Underst<strong>and</strong>ing is intuitive, subjective, <strong>and</strong><br />
qualitative, <strong>and</strong> thus inherently imperfect. For this reason, divestitures of<br />
underperforming subunits may be seen as efficient responses to unforeseen<br />
changes in industry <strong>and</strong> regulatory conditions, or more generally, to poor<br />
judgments by profit-seeking <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s. Ex post viability is not a good<br />
indicator of ex ante efficiency.<br />
We begin with the theory of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship proposed by Mises<br />
(1949), posing it as a challenge to the agency view of divestitures. We<br />
then present empirical evidence that the long-term performance of corporate<br />
acquisitions cannot, in general, be predicted by measures of agency<br />
conflicts. Instead, divestitures of previously acquired assets are more likely<br />
when firms are experimenting, learning, <strong>and</strong> otherwise trying to deal<br />
with uncertainty about future conditions. We also show that mistaken<br />
acquisitions are more likely under certain circumstances, namely during<br />
periods of intense, industry-specific regulatory activity. Our own research<br />
on restructuring (Klein <strong>and</strong> Klein, 2008) shows that significantly higher<br />
rates of divestiture follow mergers that occur in a cluster of mergers in the<br />
same industry. As argued by Mitchell <strong>and</strong> Mulherin (1996), Andrade,<br />
et al. (2001), <strong>and</strong> Andrade <strong>and</strong> Stafford (2004), mergers frequently occur<br />
in industry clusters, suggesting that mergers are driven in part by industryspecific<br />
factors, such as regulatory shocks. When an industry is regulated,<br />
deregulated, or re-regulated, economic calculation becomes more difficult,<br />
<strong>and</strong> <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial activity is hampered. It should not be surprising that<br />
poor long-term performance is more likely under those conditions.<br />
is last result is consistent with the view, expressed repeatedly in the<br />
Austrian literature, that <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial error is associated with government<br />
intervention in the marketplace—in particular, with government ownership<br />
of property <strong>and</strong> interference with the price system. Mises (1920)<br />
famously showed that economic calculation is not possible without private
54 <br />
property in all markets, especially markets for factors of production. e<br />
Austrian business-cycle literature (Mises, 1912; Hayek, 1935; Garrison,<br />
2000) suggests that <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial errors are more likely under government-sponsored<br />
credit expansion. is chapter makes a related argument:<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial decisions to make acquisitions that will later be regretted,<br />
<strong>and</strong> divested, are more likely in the wake of government intervention in<br />
particular industries.<br />
e remainder of the chapter is organized as follows. e first section<br />
reviews the Austrian literature on <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, uncertainty, <strong>and</strong><br />
economic calculation, suggesting that the ex post success of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
actions cannot be forecasted based on generally available information.<br />
e second section introduces recent theory <strong>and</strong> evidence on the reasons<br />
for mergers <strong>and</strong> divestitures, contrasting two opposing views of sell-offs:<br />
empire-building <strong>and</strong> experimentation. e third section reviews some<br />
empirical evidence on the pre-merger causes of divestiture, challenging<br />
the generally accepted, empire-building explanation. e final section<br />
concludes.<br />
Entrepreneurship, Profit, <strong>and</strong> Loss<br />
As discussed in chapter 2 above, Misesian <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship is a fundamentally<br />
dynamic phenomenon, unfolding in calendar time. Entrepreneurial<br />
profit or loss is the difference between eventual, uncertain revenues<br />
<strong>and</strong> initial outlays, less the general rate of interest. Of course, Mises’s<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>-promoter is absent from textbook models of competitive<br />
general equilibrium in which uncertainty is defined away, replaced by<br />
probabilistic risk. In these models, it is possible to anticipate which actions,<br />
on average, would be profitable. In a world of “true” (structural, rather<br />
than parametric) uncertainty, however, profit opportunities do not exist<br />
“out there,” waiting to be realized by anyone willing to take a specified<br />
action. Instead, profit opportunities are created through <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
action. As I read Mises, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial skill is not simply luck or “alertness,”<br />
the ability to recognize profit opportunities that appear, ex nihilo,<br />
to the discoverer. Rather, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship is judgment: “Alertness is the<br />
mental quality of being on the lookout for something new; judgment is<br />
the mental process of assigning relevance to those things we already know”
55<br />
(High, 1982, p. 167). In this context,<br />
promoter-<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s are those who seek to profit by actively<br />
promoting adjustment to change. ey are not content to passively<br />
adjust their ... activities to readily foreseeable changes or<br />
changes that have already occurred in their circumstances; rather,<br />
they regard change itself as an opportunity to meliorate their own<br />
conditions <strong>and</strong> aggressively attempt to anticipate <strong>and</strong> exploit it.<br />
(Salerno, 1993, p. 123; see also Hülsmann, 1997)<br />
All <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s, particularly those who operate in financial markets,<br />
use economic calculation as their primary decision-making tool. 6 By<br />
economic calculation, Mises means simply the use of present prices <strong>and</strong><br />
anticipated future prices to compare present costs with expected future<br />
benefits. In this way the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> decides what goods <strong>and</strong> services<br />
should be produced, <strong>and</strong> what methods of production should be used<br />
to produce them. “e business of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> is not merely to<br />
experiment with new technological methods, but to select from the multitude<br />
of technologically feasible methods those which are best fit to supply<br />
the public in the cheapest way with the things they are asking for most<br />
urgently” (Mises, 1951, p. 110). To make this selection, the <strong>entrepreneur</strong><br />
must weigh the costs <strong>and</strong> expected benefits of various courses of action,<br />
<strong>and</strong> for this he needs the cardinal numbers provided by money prices.<br />
Monetary calculation, then, requires private property <strong>and</strong> market prices.<br />
As we saw in chapter 1, Mises’s famous 1920 essay on economic<br />
calculation under socialism is not so much about socialism per se; it is<br />
an argument about the role of prices for capital goods (Rothbard, 1993,<br />
pp. 547–78). Entrepreneurs make decisions about resource allocation<br />
based on their expectations about future prices <strong>and</strong> the information contained<br />
in present prices. To make profits, they need information about<br />
all prices, not only the prices of consumer goods but the prices of factors<br />
of production. Without markets for capital goods, these goods can have<br />
no prices, <strong>and</strong> therefore <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s cannot make judgments about the<br />
relative scarcities of these factors. In short, resources cannot be allocated<br />
efficiently. In any environment, then—socialist or not—where a factor<br />
6 Chapter 2 above argues that financial-market <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship is a particularly important<br />
form of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial activity, though it has received little attention in the Austrian<br />
literature.
56 <br />
of production has no market price, a potential user of that factor will be<br />
unable to make rational decisions about its use. Stated this way, Mises’s<br />
claim is simply that efficient resource allocation in a market economy<br />
requires well-functioning asset markets.<br />
Despite Mises’s explicit focus on <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, much of modern<br />
production theory—indeed, the entire neoclassical theory of the firm—<br />
focuses not on <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s, but managers. e traditional theory of<br />
profit maximization is nearly always told from the perspective of the manager,<br />
the agent who operates the plant, not that of the owner, who supplies<br />
the capital to fund the plant. Yet owners control how much authority to<br />
delegate to operational managers, so <strong>capitalist</strong>s are, in an important sense,<br />
the ultimate decision-makers. To underst<strong>and</strong> the firm, then, we must focus<br />
on the actions <strong>and</strong> plans of the suppliers of financial capital, the <strong>capitalist</strong><strong>entrepreneur</strong>s.<br />
It is true, of course, that when <strong>capitalist</strong>-<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s supply resources<br />
to firms, they usually delegate to managers the day-to-day responsibility for<br />
use of those resources. e resulting possibility for managerial discretion is<br />
of course the focal problem of the modern literature on corporate finance<br />
<strong>and</strong> the theory of the firm. As discussed in chapter 2 above, the literature<br />
on corporate governance identifies a variety of mechanisms by which<br />
shareholders can limit this discretion, such as establishing boards of directors,<br />
using performance-based pay, adopting the “M-form” structure, <strong>and</strong><br />
exploiting competition among managers <strong>and</strong> potential managers. Outside<br />
the firm, competition in product, labor, <strong>and</strong> capital markets helps align<br />
managers’ interests with those of shareholders. 7<br />
We should therefore be cautious in attributing the eventual divestiture<br />
of many acquisitions, particularly during the 1960s <strong>and</strong> 1970s, to managerial<br />
motives. Moreover, the claim that the acquisitive conglomerates of<br />
the 1960s <strong>and</strong> 1970s were inefficient is inconsistent with recent evidence<br />
that during those years, diversifying acquisitions—particularly those that<br />
created internal capital markets—tended to increase the market values of<br />
the acquiring firms (Matsusaka, 1993; Hubbard <strong>and</strong> Palia, 1999; Klein,<br />
2001). In light of this evidence, “[t]he simple view that the 1980s ‘bustups’<br />
were a corrective to past managerial excesses is untenable” (Matsusaka,<br />
7 Jensen (1993) argues that internal control mechanisms are generally weak <strong>and</strong> ineffective,<br />
while external control mechanisms—where allowed to function—are typically<br />
superior.
57<br />
1993, p. 376). In short, both theory <strong>and</strong> empirical evidence cast doubt<br />
on the conventional wisdom that corporate managers made systematic,<br />
predictable mistakes by acquiring (often unrelated) subunits during the<br />
1960s <strong>and</strong> 1970s, <strong>and</strong> that financial-market participants made systematic<br />
mistakes by approving these acquisitions.<br />
Mergers, Sell-offs, <strong>and</strong> Efficiency: Theory <strong>and</strong> Evidence<br />
Why, in general, do firms exp<strong>and</strong> <strong>and</strong> diversify through merger? Why<br />
do they sometimes retreat <strong>and</strong> “refocus” through divestiture? e theory<br />
of merger is a subset of the theory of the optimal size <strong>and</strong> shape of the<br />
firm, a relatively undeveloped area in the Austrian literature. Chapters 1<br />
<strong>and</strong> 2 above argue for a modified Coasian, or contractual, view of firm<br />
boundaries, in which the limits to organization are given by the need to<br />
perform economic calculation using prices generated in external markets.<br />
Other writers see the Austrian approach as more congenial to the resourcebased<br />
theory of the firm, defining firms’ capabilities in terms of Hayekian<br />
tacit knowledge (Langlois, 1992, 1994a; Minkler, 1993a). In either case,<br />
we can think of merger or takeover as a response to a valuation discrepancy:<br />
acquisition occurs when the value of an existing firm’s assets is greater to<br />
an outside party than to its current owners. Put differently, a merger can<br />
be a response to economies of scope, in that the value of the merging firms’<br />
assets combined exceeds their joint values separately. 8 As with any voluntary<br />
exchange, the transaction is (ex ante) advantageous to both parties,<br />
<strong>and</strong> should thus be welfare-enhancing.<br />
New combinations of corporate assets can generate efficiencies by<br />
replacing poorly performing managers (Jensen <strong>and</strong> Ruback, 1983; Mitchell<br />
8 Two popular explanations for multiproduct economies of scope center on internal<br />
capital markets <strong>and</strong> strategic resources. According to the internal-capital-markets hypothesis,<br />
as expressed by Alchian (1969), Williamson (1975), Gertner, et al. (1994), <strong>and</strong> Stein<br />
(1997), internal capital markets have advantages where access to external funds is limited.<br />
e central office of the diversified firm can use informational advantages, residual control<br />
rights, <strong>and</strong> its ability to intervene selectively in divisional affairs to allocate resources within<br />
the firm better than the external capital markets would do if the divisions were st<strong>and</strong>alone<br />
firms. In the resource-based view, the firm is regarded as a stock of knowledge,<br />
establishing a range of competence that may extend across multiple product lines. Excess<br />
profits or supranormal returns are seen as rents accruing to unique factors of production<br />
(Montgomery <strong>and</strong> Wernerfelt, 1988) <strong>and</strong> firms diversify because they have excess capacity<br />
in these unique factors.
58 <br />
<strong>and</strong> Lehn, 1990), creating operating synergies (Weston, Chung, <strong>and</strong> Hoag,<br />
1990, pp. 194–95), or establishing internal capital markets (Alchian,<br />
1969; Williamson, 1975; Gertner, et al., 1994; Stein, 1997). In particular,<br />
considerable evidence suggests that the market for corporate control<br />
disciplines incumbent management. For example, Morck, Shleifer, <strong>and</strong><br />
Vishny (1988) found that firms with lower Tobin’s q-ratios are more likely<br />
to be targets of takeovers. Tobin’s q measures the ratio of the firm’s market<br />
value to the replacement cost (or book value) of its assets. Because firms<br />
with low market-to-book ratios have low expected cash flows relative to the<br />
amount of invested capital, the market-to-book ratio can be interpreted as<br />
a measure of the firm’s investment opportunities (Smith <strong>and</strong> Watts, 1992;<br />
Gaver <strong>and</strong> Gaver, 1993), or as a measure of managerial inefficiency or<br />
agency conflict within the firm (Lang, Stulz, <strong>and</strong> Walkling, 1991). Low-q<br />
firms are the most likely takeover targets.<br />
Given the benefits of takeovers, why are many mergers later “reversed”<br />
in a divestiture or spin-off? Here we distinguish between two basic views.<br />
e first, which may be termed empire-building, holds that entrenched<br />
managers make acquisitions, often paying with the acquiring firm’s (inflated)<br />
stock, primarily to increase their own power, prestige or control.<br />
ese acquisitions produce negligible efficiency gains, <strong>and</strong> are thus more<br />
likely to be divested ex post. Most important, because the acquiring firm’s<br />
motives are suspect, such acquisitions are ex ante inefficient; neutral observers<br />
can predict, based on pre-merger characteristics, that these mergers<br />
are unlikely to be viable over time. By permitting these acquisitions,<br />
capital-market participants are also guilty of systematic error. Admittedly,<br />
in the empire-building view, markets did eventually correct these mistakes<br />
with the restructurings of the 1980s. 9 Still, farsighted regulators could<br />
have reduced social costs by limiting such acquisitions in the first place.<br />
A second view, which we term <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial market process, acknowledges<br />
that unprofitable acquisitions may be mistakes ex post, but argues<br />
9 is raises the question of why, if managers were sufficiently entrenched to make<br />
inefficient acquisitions in the first place, would they not remain sufficiently entrenched<br />
to hold on to poorly performing targets, rather than divest them <strong>and</strong> risk revealing their<br />
underlying objectives? Boot (1992, p. 1402) argues that an entrenched manager will not<br />
divest because the external market will take divestiture as an admission of failure <strong>and</strong> a bad<br />
signal of his ability. e argument that divestitures indicate agency problems thus assumes<br />
a change in corporate control between the original acquisitions <strong>and</strong> the later divestitures.
59<br />
that poor long-term performance does not indicate ex ante inefficiency. In<br />
the market-process perspective, a divestiture of previously acquired assets<br />
may mean simply that profit-seeking <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s have updated their<br />
forecasts of future conditions or otherwise learned from experience. As<br />
Mises (1949, p. 582) puts it, “the outcome of action is always uncertain.<br />
Action is always speculation.” Consequently, “the real <strong>entrepreneur</strong> is a<br />
speculator, a man eager to utilize his opinion about the future structure of<br />
the market for business operations promising profits. is specific anticipative<br />
underst<strong>and</strong>ing of the conditions of the uncertain future defies any<br />
rules <strong>and</strong> systematization” (Mises, 1949, p. 582, emphasis in original). 10<br />
As discussed above, this notion of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial decision making<br />
under uncertainty squares with recent theories of acquisitions as a form of<br />
experimentation (Mosakowski, 1997; Boot, Milbourn, <strong>and</strong> akor, 1999;<br />
Matsusaka, 2001). In these models, profit-seeking <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s can learn<br />
their own capabilities only by trying various combinations of activities,<br />
which could include diversifying into new industries. Firms may thus<br />
make diversifying acquisitions even if they know these acquisitions are<br />
likely to be reversed in a divestiture. is process generates information<br />
that is useful for revising <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial plans, <strong>and</strong> thus an acquisition<br />
strategy may be successful even if individual acquisitions are not. In these<br />
cases, the long-term viability of an acquisition may be systematically related<br />
to publicly observable, pre-merger characteristics associated with experimentation,<br />
but not characteristics associated with managerial discretion.<br />
To explain the particular pattern of mergers <strong>and</strong> acquisitions observed<br />
over the last several decades, market-process explanations must appeal to<br />
changes in the legal, political, competitive, or regulatory environments that<br />
affect the ability of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s to anticipate future conditions. Why,<br />
for instance, was it particularly difficult for <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s to forecast the<br />
success of acquisitions in the 1960s <strong>and</strong> 1970s? Why did <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s<br />
feel a greater need to experiment with various combinations of businesses<br />
during those years?<br />
One possibility is that complex organizations with active internal capital<br />
markets were necessary in the 1960s, but became less important after<br />
capital markets were deregulated in the 1970s. e investment community<br />
10 See chapter 6 below for details on Mises’s approach to uncertainty.
60 <br />
in the 1960s has been described as a small, close-knit group where competition<br />
was minimal <strong>and</strong> peer influence strong Bernstein (1992). As Bhidé<br />
(1990, p. 76) puts it, “internal capital markets . .. may well have possessed<br />
a significant edge because the external markets were not highly developed.<br />
In those days, one’s success on Wall Street reportedly depended far more<br />
on personal connections than analytical prowess.” During that period, the<br />
financial markets were relatively poor sources of capital. In 1975, the<br />
SEC deregulated brokerage houses <strong>and</strong> removed its rule on fixed-price<br />
commissions. e effect of deregulation, not surprisingly, was to increase<br />
competition among providers of investment services. “is competitive<br />
process has resulted in a significant increase in the ability of our external<br />
capital markets to monitor corporate performance <strong>and</strong> allocate resources”<br />
(p. 77). As the cost of external finance has fallen, firms have tended to rely<br />
less on internal finance, <strong>and</strong> thus the value added from internal-capitalmarket<br />
allocation has fallen. Consequently, firms have adopted simpler,<br />
more “focused” structures that rely more heavily on external capital markets<br />
<strong>and</strong> outsourcing, possibly explaining some of the divestitures observed<br />
in the last two decades.<br />
Are Divestitures Predictable? Evidence from a Duration Study<br />
is section summarizes some ongoing research on the causes of divestiture<br />
(Klein <strong>and</strong> Klein, 2008). If acquisitions are most often symptoms of managerial<br />
empire-building, as suggested by Ravenscraft <strong>and</strong> Scherer (1987),<br />
Porter (1987), <strong>and</strong> other critics, then pre-merger characteristics associated<br />
with high levels of managerial discretion should be systematically related<br />
to the long-term failure <strong>and</strong> reversal of these acquisitions. In the marketprocess<br />
view, by contrast, long-term performance should be correlated only<br />
with pre-merger characteristics associated with experimentation, rapidly<br />
changing environments, or knowledge-intensive industries. Our empirical<br />
research finds little support for the empire-building hypothesis, <strong>and</strong><br />
much stronger support for the market-process view. Specifically, we find<br />
that most characteristics typically associated with empire-building are poor<br />
predictors of merger duration. e evidence also suggests that divestiture<br />
is more likely when the original acquisition is driven by industry-specific<br />
competitive or regulatory shocks.
61<br />
Klein <strong>and</strong> Klein (2008) study 222 pairs of firms that merged during<br />
the 1977–1983 period. Of the 222 acquisitions, 64, or almost 30 percent,<br />
had been divested by July 1995. We used a duration or “hazard” model<br />
to study the effects of pre-merger characteristics on the time to divestiture.<br />
Duration models help explain how exogenous factors, unobserved factors,<br />
<strong>and</strong> time itself affect the average duration until some discrete event (in our<br />
case, divestiture) occurs. Duration analysis allows us to see, historically,<br />
how characteristics of the acquiring <strong>and</strong> acquired firms affect the likelihood<br />
that the acquired firm will later be divested.<br />
To study the effects of pre-merger characteristics on average merger<br />
duration, we estimated a hazard regression of duration (measured as the<br />
natural logarithm of the number of days) on a constant <strong>and</strong> on a series<br />
of potentially exogenous factors. For assessing the empire-building hypothesis,<br />
we included three characteristics associated with high levels of<br />
managerial discretion: relatedness of target <strong>and</strong> acquirer, differences in<br />
price-earnings ratios, <strong>and</strong> the medium of payment. Relatedness addresses<br />
the common view that managers deliberately pursue unrelated targets to<br />
exp<strong>and</strong> their control or make themselves more valuable to the firm. Following<br />
Kaplan <strong>and</strong> Weisbach (1992), we examined this claim by constructing<br />
a dummy variable equal to one if the acquiring <strong>and</strong> target firm share<br />
at least one two-digit SIC code <strong>and</strong> zero otherwise.<br />
Differences in price-earnings ratios are commonly seen as another indicator<br />
of merger motives. Merger critics have often suggested that acquiring<br />
firms grow <strong>and</strong> prosper by “bootstrapping.” is refers to the practice<br />
whereby bidding firms seek targets with low P/E ratios to boost their reported<br />
earnings per share. It is trivially mathematically true that when a<br />
firm with a high P/E multiple acquires a firm with a low P/E multiple <strong>and</strong><br />
pays with its own stock, the acquirer’s earnings per share will rise, simply<br />
because the combined earnings of the two firms will then be divided by a<br />
smaller number of total shares outst<strong>and</strong>ing. Hence, it is argued, acquiring<br />
firms can exp<strong>and</strong> rapidly, with market approval, as managers exploit this<br />
accounting opportunity. 11<br />
11 is is Malkiel’s (1990, p. 58) explanation for the conglomerate boom: “the major<br />
impetus for the conglomerate wave of the 1960s was that the acquisition process itself<br />
could be made to produce growth in earnings per share.... By an easy bit of legerdemain,<br />
[conglomerate managers] could put together a group of companies with no basic potential<br />
at all <strong>and</strong> produce steadily rising per-share earnings.” For a more balanced discussion of
62 <br />
Of course, this argument assumes market participants could be systematically<br />
fooled by a simple algebraic trick. Admittedly, much more<br />
complicated financial <strong>and</strong> balance-sheet manipulations are often used in<br />
corporate-control transactions: bidders in the 1960s <strong>and</strong> 1970s sometimes<br />
financed acquisitions with convertible bonds, convertible preferred stocks,<br />
<strong>and</strong> other unique instruments. Although investors could (<strong>and</strong> eventually<br />
did) require that earnings be reported on a “fully diluted” basis, to take<br />
account of these manipulations, Malkiel (1990, p. 61) reports that “most<br />
investors in the middle 1960s ignored such niceties <strong>and</strong> were satisfied only<br />
to see steadily <strong>and</strong> rapidly rising earnings.” However, there is no evidence<br />
that bootstrapping was either prevalent or successful (Barber, Palmer, <strong>and</strong><br />
Wallace, 1995; Matsusaka, 1993).<br />
Nonetheless, we included a measure of relative P/E ratios to see if acquirers<br />
that choose targets with lower P/E ratios are historically more likely<br />
to divest those same targets, implying that bootstrapping does tend to fool<br />
investors, as increases in reported earnings disguise inefficient acquisitions.<br />
We also included a series of dummy variables to represent the medium<br />
of payment used in the merger. Several theories suggest that how an<br />
acquisition is financed can affect performance. First, the bootstrapping<br />
technique described above works only for mergers financed by stock swap.<br />
Second, Jensen (1986) holds that financing takeovers by issuing debt serves<br />
to discipline the acquiring firm’s management by reducing post-merger<br />
discretion in the use of free cash flow. If true, we would expect entrenched<br />
managers to avoid making acquisitions using debt, opting for stock swaps<br />
instead.<br />
In the market-process or experimentation view, by contrast, divestitures<br />
occur when the acquirer receives new information about the target<br />
after the merger has taken place. Plausibly, some relevant characteristics<br />
of potential target firms can be learned only by experience, forcing<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s to revise their plans accordingly. What kinds of targets are<br />
most likely to have unknown characteristics? Large firms engage in more<br />
activities than smaller firms, so potential acquirers have more to learn. On<br />
the other h<strong>and</strong>, smaller firms are less likely to have been written about in<br />
the business press, so one could plausibly argue that private information<br />
is a bigger problem for small targets. 12 We included target size in our<br />
the bootstrapping practice see Lynch (1971, pp. 55–56).<br />
12 However, in our sample, all targets are themselves publicly traded corporations, so
63<br />
regressions to see if either aspect is relevant. Firms in rapidly changing,<br />
knowledge-intensive industries are also likely to have characteristics hidden<br />
from potential acquirers. To capture this effect, we created a dummy<br />
variable based on two-digit SIC codes. e dummy takes a value of one<br />
if the target is in any of the following industries: computers (systems,<br />
software, <strong>and</strong> services), medical products, communications, aerospace, <strong>and</strong><br />
miscellaneous high-tech industries. We also included target R&D because<br />
R&D is difficult to value, especially to outsiders, <strong>and</strong> thus firms in R&Dintensive<br />
industries are likely to have hidden characteristics. Potential<br />
acquirers would know potential targets’ R&D expenditures (which is reported),<br />
but this may not give the acquirers much information on the<br />
quality of the research or even the content of the R&D.<br />
Finally, unrelated acquisitions, as discussed above, may be a form of experimentation,<br />
as firms try new combinations of activities to find those that<br />
best fit their existing capabilities. Although match-seeking acquisitions are<br />
more likely to be divested, they can still be part of a value-maximizing<br />
acquisition strategy. Our relatedness variable, described above, can proxy<br />
for match-seeking behavior. However, the best way to identify matchseeking<br />
firms is to look directly at historical patterns of acquisitions <strong>and</strong><br />
divestitures. A firm with a history of repeated acquisitions <strong>and</strong> divestitures,<br />
especially acquisitions into unrelated industries, is likely to be a matchseeker,<br />
<strong>and</strong> thus any current acquisition is more likely to be divested. Unfortunately,<br />
our merger sample is too small to compile detailed acquisition<br />
<strong>and</strong> divestiture histories on individual acquirers. As a first approximation,<br />
we searched our sample for acquiring firms with at least one previous<br />
acquisition that was later divested within a few years of the acquisition.<br />
We created a dummy variable equal to one if the acquirer in a particular<br />
merger met these criteria, <strong>and</strong> zero otherwise. 13<br />
As noted above, periods of intense merger activity in particular industries<br />
may be responses to industry-specific competitive or regulatory<br />
shocks. Mitchell <strong>and</strong> Mulherin (1996), Andrade, et al. (2001), <strong>and</strong> Andrade<br />
<strong>and</strong> Stafford (2004) argue that mergers tend to occur in industry<br />
clusters, suggesting that industry-specific factors are important. Mitchell<br />
lack of media exposure is unlikely to be a problem.<br />
13 Mosakowski (1997) suggests that younger firms face greater uncertainty, or a higher<br />
level of “causal ambiguity,” about the best use of their resources, which implies that firm<br />
age could also be a proxy for match-seeking behavior.
64 <br />
<strong>and</strong> Mulherin argue that corporate takeovers are often the most cost-effective<br />
way for industries to respond to these shocks. Moreover, they add,<br />
“because takeovers are driven in part by industry shocks, it is not surprising<br />
that many firms exhibit volatile performance following takeovers, with<br />
actual failures following some negative shocks” (Mitchell <strong>and</strong> Mulherin,<br />
1996, p. 195).<br />
To capture the effects of industry-specific shocks such as regulatory <strong>and</strong><br />
tax changes, we included measures of industry clustering, both for acquirers<br />
<strong>and</strong> for targets, in our regressions. We did find substantial clustering<br />
in our sample. For example, slightly more than half of the mergers during<br />
the 1977–83 period occurred in only five of the thirty-seven (two-digit)<br />
SIC industries in our sample, both for acquirers <strong>and</strong> targets, with threequarters<br />
occurring in ten industries. We constructed clustering variables<br />
by counting the number of mergers in each two-digit SIC category in each<br />
year <strong>and</strong> creating variables for each merger corresponding to the number<br />
of mergers occurring (a) within one year of the merger under observation<br />
(including the year before the merger, the year of the merger, <strong>and</strong> the year<br />
after the merger, to span a three-year window), (b) within two years of the<br />
merger (a five-year window), <strong>and</strong> (c) within the entire sample (a seven-year<br />
window). If risky acquisitions or increased levels of experimentation tend<br />
to appear during periods of industry-specific shocks, then these clustering<br />
variables will have negative <strong>and</strong> significant effects on the length of time to<br />
divestiture.<br />
Our results challenge the empire-building hypothesis <strong>and</strong> offer evidence<br />
more consistent with the market-process view. Of the variables<br />
associated with agency problems, only relatedness has a statistically significant<br />
effect on merger duration. Neither P/E differences nor the medium<br />
of payment has a statistically significant coefficient in any of several specifications.<br />
e coefficient on relatedness is positive, meaning that related<br />
acquisitions are less likely, on average, to be divested (as in Kaplan <strong>and</strong><br />
Weisbach, 1992). However, the coefficient on relatedness is also consistent<br />
with the market-process explanation. Of the five variables associated with<br />
this view, the coefficient on relatedness is positive <strong>and</strong> significant, the coefficient<br />
on target R&D is negative <strong>and</strong> significant, <strong>and</strong> the coefficient on<br />
the match-seeking indicator is negative <strong>and</strong> significant, all as expected. e<br />
coefficients on target size <strong>and</strong> the indicator for high-technology industries<br />
have the expected signs (positive <strong>and</strong> negative, respectively) but are not
65<br />
statistically significant.<br />
Overall, our findings suggest that the divestitures in our sample are<br />
not, on average, the predictable result of unwise acquisitions. Rather,<br />
divestitures follow experimentation <strong>and</strong> learning, healthy characteristics<br />
of a market economy. Moreover, industry clustering appears to have a<br />
regular effect on average merger duration. e coefficients on our acquirerclustering<br />
variables are consistently negative <strong>and</strong> statistically significant.<br />
(e coefficients on the target-clustering variables, by contrast, are not<br />
statistically significant.) is suggests that volatile performance does follow<br />
shocks, as suggested by Mitchell <strong>and</strong> Mulherin (1996).<br />
is finding is consistent with the view that firms make acquisitions<br />
when faced with increased uncertainty (see Spulber, 1992, pp. 557–59).<br />
Regulatory interference could be a major cause of such uncertainty. As discussed<br />
above, government intervention makes economic calculation more<br />
difficult, <strong>and</strong> can ultimately render calculation impossible. When faced<br />
with increased regulatory interference, firms apparently respond by experimenting,<br />
making riskier acquisitions, <strong>and</strong> consequently making more<br />
mistakes, ex post.<br />
Conclusions<br />
Do <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s make predictable mistakes? eory <strong>and</strong> evidence suggest<br />
otherwise. Contrary to the conventional wisdom on mergers <strong>and</strong> sell-offs,<br />
divestitures of previously acquired assets do not necessarily indicate that<br />
the original acquisitions were mistakes. Indeed, empire-building motives<br />
do not seem to be systematically related to long-term merger performance.<br />
Instead, divestitures are more likely to be associated with experimentation,<br />
learning, <strong>and</strong> other socially beneficial activities.<br />
Acquisitions are uncertain endeavors, <strong>and</strong> the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>-promoter<br />
—along with the manager to whom he delegates authority—is a speculator.<br />
If the consequences of his actions were determinate, he would not be an<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>, but rather, as some economic theories seem to treat him, “a<br />
soulless automaton” (Mises, 1949, p. 582). However, the future can never<br />
be known with certainty; long-term profit <strong>and</strong> loss cannot be predicted<br />
based on current information. As Mises explains:<br />
What distinguishes the successful <strong>entrepreneur</strong> <strong>and</strong> promoter from<br />
other people is precisely the fact that he does not let himself be
66 <br />
guided by what was <strong>and</strong> is, but arranges his affairs on the ground<br />
of his opinion about the future. He sees the past <strong>and</strong> the present as<br />
other people do; but he judges the future in a different way. (p. 585)<br />
As discussed above, it is hardly surprising that these judgments are<br />
less than perfect. e relevant question for policy is whether there is a<br />
feasible alternative to market-based corporate governance. Our reading of<br />
the political-economy literature leaves us doubtful that such an alternative<br />
exists.
CHAPTER 4<br />
The Entrepreneurial Organization of<br />
Heterogeneous Capital †<br />
With Kirsten Foss, Nicolai J. Foss, <strong>and</strong> S<strong>and</strong>ra K. Klein<br />
e theory of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship comes in many guises. Management scholars<br />
<strong>and</strong> economists have made the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> an innovator, a leader, a<br />
creator, a discoverer, an equilibrator, <strong>and</strong> more. In only a few of these<br />
theories, however, is <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship explicitly linked to asset ownership<br />
(examples include Casson, 1982; Foss, 1993b; Foss <strong>and</strong> Klein, 2005;<br />
Knight, 1921; Langlois <strong>and</strong> Cosgel, 1993; Mises, 1949). Ownership theories<br />
of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship start with the proposition that <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
judgment is costly to trade, an idea originally suggested by Knight (1921).<br />
When judgment is complementary to other assets, it makes sense for <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s<br />
to own these complementary assets. e <strong>entrepreneur</strong>’s role,<br />
then, is to arrange or organize the capital goods he owns. Entrepreneurial<br />
judgment is ultimately judgment about the control of resources.<br />
In a world of identical capital goods, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial judgment plays a<br />
relatively minor role. Unfortunately, mainstream neoclassical economics,<br />
† Published originally in Journal of Management Studies 44, no. 7 (November 2007):<br />
1165–86.<br />
67
68 <br />
upon which most economic theories of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship are based, lacks a<br />
systematic theory of capital heterogeneity. Strongly influenced by Knight’s<br />
(1936) concept of capital as a permanent, homogeneous fund of value,<br />
rather than a discrete stock of heterogeneous capital goods, neoclassical<br />
economists have devoted little attention to capital theory. For this reason,<br />
ownership theories of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, as well as contemporary theories<br />
of firm boundaries, ownership, <strong>and</strong> strategy, are not generally founded on<br />
a systematic theory of capital or asset attributes. is chapter outlines the<br />
capital theory associated with the Austrian school of economics <strong>and</strong> derives<br />
implications for <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship <strong>and</strong> economic organization.<br />
e Austrian school of economics (Menger, 1871; Böhm-Bawerk,<br />
1889; Mises, 1949; Hayek, 1948, 1968b; Kirzner, 1973; Lachmann,<br />
1956; Rothbard, 1962) is well known in management studies for its<br />
contributions to the theory of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship <strong>and</strong> the complementary<br />
“market process” account of economic activity (Chiles, 2003; Chiles <strong>and</strong><br />
Choi, 2000; Hill <strong>and</strong> Deeds, 1996; Jacobson, 1992; Langlois, 2001;<br />
Roberts <strong>and</strong> Eisenhardt, 2003). Other characteristically Austrian ideas<br />
such as the time structure of capital <strong>and</strong> the “malinvestment” theory of<br />
the business-cycle theory have received much less attention. To several<br />
Austrians, the theory of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship was closely related to the theory<br />
of capital. As Lachmann (1956, pp. 13, 16) argued: “We are living in a<br />
world of unexpected change; hence capital combinations . . . will be ever<br />
changing, will be dissolved <strong>and</strong> reformed. In this activity, we find the real<br />
function of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>.” It is this “real function” that we elaborate<br />
in the following.<br />
Management scholars will hardly be startled by the claim that <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s<br />
organize heterogeneous capital goods. e management literature<br />
abounds with notions of heterogeneous “resources,” “competencies,”<br />
“capabilities,” “assets,” <strong>and</strong> the like. Linking such work to <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship<br />
would seem to be a rather natural undertaking (see, e.g. Alvarez <strong>and</strong><br />
Busenitz, 2001). However, modern theories of economic organization are<br />
not built on a unified theory of capital heterogeneity; instead, they simply<br />
invoke ad hoc specificities when necessary. e Austrian school offers<br />
a systematic, comprehensive theory of capital, <strong>and</strong> Austrian notions of<br />
capital heterogeneity can inform, synthesize, <strong>and</strong> improve the treatment<br />
of specificities in the theory of the firm. Adopting the Austrian view of<br />
capital also reveals new sources of transaction costs that influence economic
69<br />
organization.<br />
e chapter proceeds as follows. We begin, building on Foss <strong>and</strong> Klein<br />
(2005), by linking the theory of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship <strong>and</strong> the theory of the<br />
firm. e link involves first, defining <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship as the exercise of<br />
judgment over resource uses under uncertainty, <strong>and</strong> second, viewing the<br />
theory of economic organization as a subset of the theory of asset ownership.<br />
We then discuss “assets” in the specific context of capital theory,<br />
showing that the assumption of heterogeneous capital is necessary to the<br />
theory of the firm. We next summarize the Austrian theory of capital,<br />
elaborating <strong>and</strong> exp<strong>and</strong>ing on those parts of the theory most relevant for<br />
economic organization. e final section weaves these elements together<br />
to provide new insights into key questions of the emergence, boundaries,<br />
<strong>and</strong> internal organization of the firm. We conclude with some suggestions<br />
for testable implications that may be drawn from our theory.<br />
Entrepreneurship, Judgment, <strong>and</strong> Asset Ownership<br />
Entrepreneurs are the founders <strong>and</strong> developers of business firms. Indeed,<br />
the establishment of a new business venture is the quintessential manifestation<br />
of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship. Yet, as Foss <strong>and</strong> Klein (2005) point out, the<br />
theory of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship <strong>and</strong> the theory of the firm developed largely<br />
in isolation. e economic theory of the firm emerged <strong>and</strong> took shape as<br />
the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> was being banished from microeconomic analysis, first<br />
in the 1930s when the firm was subsumed into neoclassical price theory<br />
(O’Brien, 1984) <strong>and</strong> again in the 1980s as the theory of the firm was<br />
restated using game theory <strong>and</strong> information economics. Modern contributions<br />
to the theory of the firm (Hart, 1995; Milgrom <strong>and</strong> Roberts,<br />
1992; Williamson, 1975, 1985, 1996) mention <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship only in<br />
passing, if at all.<br />
Foss <strong>and</strong> Klein (2005) show how the theory of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship <strong>and</strong><br />
the theory of the firm can be linked using the concept of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship<br />
as judgment. 1 is view traces its origins to the first systematic treatment<br />
of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship in economics, Richard Cantillon’s Essai sur la nature<br />
de commerce en géneral (1755). It conceives <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship as judgmental<br />
decision making under conditions of uncertainty. Judgment refers<br />
1 For related treatments along the same lines, see Casson (1982) <strong>and</strong> Langlois <strong>and</strong><br />
Cosgel (1993).
70 <br />
primarily to business decision making when the range of possible future<br />
outcomes, let alone the likelihood of individual outcomes, is generally<br />
unknown (what Knight terms uncertainty, rather than mere probabilistic<br />
risk). More generally, judgment is required “when no obviously correct<br />
model or decision rule is available or when relevant data is unreliable or<br />
incomplete” (Casson, 1993).<br />
As such, judgment is distinct from boldness, daring, or imagination<br />
(Aldrich <strong>and</strong> Wiedenmayer, 1993; Begley <strong>and</strong> Boyd, 1987; Ch<strong>and</strong>ler <strong>and</strong><br />
Jansen, 1992; Hood <strong>and</strong> Young, 1993; Lumpkin <strong>and</strong> Dess, 1996), innovation<br />
(Schumpeter, 1911), alertness (Kirzner, 1973), leadership (Witt,<br />
1998), <strong>and</strong> other concepts of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship that appear in the economics<br />
<strong>and</strong> management literatures. Judgment must be exercised in mundane<br />
circumstances, as Knight (1921) emphasized, for ongoing operations<br />
as well as new ventures. Alertness is the ability to react to existing opportunities<br />
while judgment refers to the creation of new opportunities. 2<br />
ose who specialize in judgmental decision making may be dynamic,<br />
charismatic leaders, but they need not possess these traits. In short, decision<br />
making under uncertainty is <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial, whether it involves<br />
imagination, creativity, leadership, <strong>and</strong> related factors or not.<br />
Knight (1921) introduces judgment to link profit <strong>and</strong> the firm to uncertainty.<br />
Judgment primarily refers to the process of businessmen forming<br />
estimates of future events in situations in which the relevant probability<br />
distributions are themselves unknown. Entrepreneurship represents<br />
judgment that cannot be assessed in terms of its marginal product <strong>and</strong><br />
which cannot, accordingly, be paid a wage (Knight, 1921, p. 311). In<br />
other words, there is no market for the judgment that <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s rely<br />
on, <strong>and</strong> therefore exercising judgment requires the person with judgment<br />
to start a firm. Of course, judgmental decision-makers can hire consultants,<br />
forecasters, technical experts, <strong>and</strong> so on. However, as we explain<br />
below, in doing so they are exercising their own <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial judgment.<br />
Judgment thus implies asset ownership, for judgmental decision making<br />
is ultimately decision making about the employment of resources. An<br />
2 In Kirzner’s treatment, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship is characterized as “a responding agency. I<br />
view the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> not as a source of innovative ideas ex nihilo, but as being alert to<br />
the opportunities that exist already <strong>and</strong> are waiting to be noticed” (Kirzner, 1973, p. 74,<br />
emphasis in original)
71<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong> without capital goods is, in Knight’s sense, no <strong>entrepreneur</strong>. 3<br />
e notion of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship as judgment implies an obvious link<br />
with the theory of the firm, particularly those theories (transaction cost<br />
economics <strong>and</strong> the property-rights approach) that put asset ownership at<br />
the forefront of firm organization (Hart 1995; Williamson 1996; cf. also<br />
Langlois <strong>and</strong> Cosgel 1993). e firm is defined as the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> plus<br />
the alienable assets he owns <strong>and</strong> therefore ultimately controls. e theory<br />
of the firm then becomes a theory of how the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> arranges his<br />
heterogeneous capital assets, what combinations of assets will he seek to<br />
acquire, what (proximate) decisions will he delegate to subordinates, how<br />
will he provide incentives <strong>and</strong> use monitoring to see that his assets are<br />
used consistently with his judgments, <strong>and</strong> so on. Given this emphasis on<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, one might expect the modern theory of the firm to be<br />
based on a coherent, systematic theory of capital. is is not the case,<br />
however.<br />
Capital Theory <strong>and</strong> the Theory of the Firm<br />
Shmoo Capital <strong>and</strong> Its Implications<br />
Modern (neoclassical) economics focuses on a highly stylized model of the<br />
production process. e firm is a production function, a “black box” that<br />
transforms inputs (l<strong>and</strong>, labor, capital) into output (consumer goods). We<br />
noted in chapters 1 <strong>and</strong> 2 that this model omits the critical organizational<br />
details of production, rarely looking inside the black box to see how hierarchies<br />
are structured, how incentives are provided, how teams are organized,<br />
<strong>and</strong> the like. An equally serious omission, perhaps, is that production<br />
is treated as a one-stage process, in which factors are instantly converted<br />
into final goods, rather than a complex, multi-stage process unfolding<br />
through time <strong>and</strong> employing rounds of intermediate goods. “Capital”<br />
is treated as a homogeneous factor of production, the K that appears in<br />
the production function along with L for labor. Following Solow (1957)<br />
models of economic growth typically model capital as what Paul Samuelson<br />
called “shmoo”—an infinitely elastic, fully moldable factor that can be<br />
3 is contrasts with Schumpeter’s <strong>and</strong> Kirzner’s conceptions of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, in<br />
which <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship can be exercised without the possession of any capital goods. On<br />
this contrast, see Foss <strong>and</strong> Klein (2005).
72 <br />
substituted costlessly from one production process to another.<br />
In a world of shmoo capital, economic organization is relatively unimportant.<br />
All capital assets possess the same attributes, <strong>and</strong> thus the costs of<br />
inspecting, measuring, <strong>and</strong> monitoring the attributes of productive assets<br />
is trivial. Exchange markets for capital assets would be virtually devoid<br />
of transaction costs. A few basic contractual problems—in particular,<br />
principal–agent conflicts over the supply of labor services—may remain,<br />
though workers would all use identical capital assets, <strong>and</strong> this would greatly<br />
contribute to reducing the costs of measuring their productivity.<br />
While transaction costs would not disappear entirely in such a world,<br />
asset ownership would be relatively unimportant. e possibility of specifying<br />
all possible uses of an asset significantly reduces the costs of writing<br />
complete, contingent contracts between resource owners <strong>and</strong> <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s<br />
governing the uses of the relevant assets. 4 Contracts would largely<br />
substitute for ownership, leaving the boundary of the firm indeterminate<br />
(Hart, 1995).<br />
Capital in Modern Theories of the Firm<br />
By contrast, all modern theories of the firm assume (often implicitly) that<br />
capital assets possess varying attributes, so that all assets are not equally<br />
valuable in all uses. Here we review how capital heterogeneity leads to<br />
non-trivial contracting problems, the solutions to which may require the<br />
creation of a firm.<br />
ASSET SPECIFICITY APPROACHES. In transaction cost economics (TCE)<br />
(Williamson, 1975, 1985, 1996) <strong>and</strong> the “new” property-rights approach<br />
(Grossman <strong>and</strong> Hart, 1986; Hart <strong>and</strong> Moore, 1990), some assets are<br />
conceived as specific to particular users. If complete, contingent contracts<br />
specifying the most valuable uses of such assets in all possible states of the<br />
world cannot be written, then owners of productive assets face certain risks.<br />
4 Contracts might still be incomplete because contracting parties have different, subjective<br />
expectations about the likelihood of various contingencies affecting the value of<br />
the (homogeneous) capital asset. Agents may also differ in their ability to learn about<br />
possible uses of the capital good. In other words, Knightian uncertainty plus bounded<br />
rationality could drive contractual incompleteness even in a world without capital heterogeneity.<br />
However, the neoclassical world of shmoo capital is characterized by parametric<br />
uncertainty, common priors, <strong>and</strong> hyperrationality.
73<br />
Primarily, if circumstances change unexpectedly, the original governing<br />
agreement may no longer be effective. e need to adapt to unforeseen<br />
contingencies constitutes an important cost of contracting. Failure to<br />
adapt imposes what Williamson (1991b) calls “maladaptation costs,” the<br />
best known of which is the “holdup” problem associated with relationshipspecific<br />
investments.<br />
It is obvious that maladaptation costs largely disappear if all assets are<br />
equally valuable in all uses. Potential holdup would still be a concern<br />
for owners of relationship-specific human capital <strong>and</strong> raw materials, but<br />
disagreements over the efficient use of capital goods would become irrelevant.<br />
5 e scope of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial activity would also be severely reduced,<br />
since <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s would have no need to arrange particular combinations<br />
of capital assets.<br />
RESOURCE- AND KNOWLEDGE-BASED APPROACHES. Resource-based (Barney,<br />
1991; Lippman <strong>and</strong> Rumelt, 2003; Wernerfelt, 1984) <strong>and</strong> knowledgebased<br />
(Grant, 1996; Penrose, 1959) approaches also emphasize capital<br />
heterogeneity, but their focus is not generally economic organization, but<br />
rather competitive advantage. 6 e emphasis in these approaches is not<br />
economic organization, however, but competitive advantage. e latter<br />
is seen as emerging from bundles of resources (including knowledge).<br />
Different resource bundles are associated with different efficiencies translating<br />
into a theory of competitive advantage. Resource- <strong>and</strong> knowledgebased<br />
scholars often emphasize that heterogeneous assets do not give rise<br />
independently to competitive advantages. Rather, it is the interactions<br />
among these resources, their relations of specificity <strong>and</strong> co-specialization,<br />
that generate such advantages (e.g. Barney, 1991; Black <strong>and</strong> Boal, 1994;<br />
Dierickx <strong>and</strong> Cool, 1989). However, this notion is not developed from<br />
any comprehensive perspective on asset specificity <strong>and</strong> co-specialization<br />
(or complementarity) (as in Teece, 1982).<br />
5 Resources that are initially homogeneous could become heterogeneous over time,<br />
through learning by doing or co-specialization of human <strong>and</strong> physical capital. Here we<br />
refer to conditions of permanent homogeneity.<br />
6 Penrose’s approach, unlike modern resource- <strong>and</strong> knowledge-based approaches, did<br />
emphasize one important element of economic organization, namely the rate of growth of<br />
the firm.
74 <br />
“OLD” PROPERTY RIGHTS THEORY. A sophisticated approach to capital heterogeneity<br />
can be drawn from the property-rights approach associated with<br />
economists such as Coase (1960), Alchian (1965), Demsetz (1964, 1967),<br />
<strong>and</strong>, particularly, Barzel (1997). ese writers focus not on individual<br />
assets per se, but on bundles of asset attributes to which property rights<br />
may be held (Foss <strong>and</strong> Foss, 2001).<br />
While it is common to view capital heterogeneity in terms of physical<br />
heterogeneity—beer barrels <strong>and</strong> blast furnaces are different because of<br />
their physical differences—the old property-rights approach emphasizes<br />
that capital goods are heterogeneous because they have different levels <strong>and</strong><br />
kinds of valued attributes (in the terminology of Barzel, 1997). 7 Attributes<br />
are characteristics, functions, or possible uses of assets, as perceived by an<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>. For example, a copying machine has multiple attributes because<br />
it can be used at different times, by different people, <strong>and</strong> for different<br />
types of copying work; that it can be purchased in different colors <strong>and</strong> sizes;<br />
<strong>and</strong> so on. 8 Property rights to the machine itself can be partitioned, in the<br />
sense that rights to its attributes can be defined <strong>and</strong> traded, depending on<br />
transaction costs (Foss <strong>and</strong> Foss, 2001).<br />
Clearly, virtually all assets have multiple attributes. Assets are heterogeneous<br />
to the extent that they have different, <strong>and</strong> different levels of, valued<br />
attributes. Attributes may also vary over time, even for a particular asset.<br />
In a world of “true” uncertainty, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s are unlikely to know all<br />
relevant attributes of all assets when production decisions are made. Nor<br />
can the future attributes of an asset, as it is used in production, be forecast<br />
with certainty. Future attributes must be discovered, over time, as assets<br />
are used in production. Or, to formulate the problem slightly differently,<br />
future attributes are created as <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s envision new ways of using<br />
assets to produce goods <strong>and</strong> services. 9<br />
7 Foss <strong>and</strong> Foss (2005) link the property rights approach to the resource-based view,<br />
demonstrating how the more “micro” approach of the property rights approach provides<br />
additional insights into resource value. See also Kim <strong>and</strong> Mahoney (2002, 2005) for similar<br />
arguments.<br />
8 Clearly, this notion of subjectively perceived attributes of capital assets is related to<br />
Penrose’s (1959) point that physically identical capital assets may yield different services,<br />
depending on, for example, the nature of the administrative framework in which they are<br />
embedded.<br />
9 In this chapter we do not distinguish between “discovery” <strong>and</strong> “creation” as alternative<br />
conceptions of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial act (Alvarez <strong>and</strong> Barney, 2007). Chapter 5 below<br />
discusses this distinction in detail.
75<br />
SUMMING UP. While capital heterogeneity thus plays an important role<br />
in transaction cost, resource-based, <strong>and</strong> property-rights approaches to the<br />
firm, none of these approaches rests on a unified, systematic theory of<br />
capital. Instead, each invokes the needed specificities in an ad hoc fashion<br />
to rationalize particular trading problems for transaction cost economics,<br />
asset specificity; for capabilities theories, tacit knowledge; <strong>and</strong> so on. Some<br />
writers (Demsetz, 1991; Langlois <strong>and</strong> Foss, 1999; Winter, 1988) argue that<br />
the economics of organization has shown a tendency (albeit an imperfect<br />
one) to respect an implicit dichotomy between production <strong>and</strong> exchange.<br />
us, as Langlois <strong>and</strong> Foss (1999) argue, there is an implicit agreement,<br />
that the production function approach with its attendant assumptions (e.g.<br />
blueprint, knowledge) tells us what we need to know about production, so<br />
theories of the firm can focus on transacting <strong>and</strong> how transactional hazards<br />
can be mitigated by organization. Production issues, including capital<br />
theory, never really take center stage. is is problematic if production<br />
itself reveals new problems of transacting that may influence economic<br />
organization.<br />
The Attributes Approach to Capital Heterogeneity<br />
An alternative tradition in economics, the Austrian school, does have a systematic,<br />
comprehensive theory of capital, though it has not generally been<br />
applied to the business firm. 10 Instead, most of the substantial literature on<br />
Austrian capital theory focuses on the economy’s overall capital structure<br />
<strong>and</strong> how money <strong>and</strong> credit markets affect the allocation of resources across<br />
different stages of the production process. 11<br />
Austrian Capital Theory<br />
e concept of heterogeneous capital has a long <strong>and</strong> distinguished place<br />
in Austrian economics. 12 Early Austrian writers argued that capital has<br />
10 Of the several dozen papers on Austrian economics <strong>and</strong> the theory of the firm (including,<br />
for instance, the papers collected in Foss <strong>and</strong> Klein, 2002), only a few deal with<br />
Austrian capital theory (see Chiles, Meyer, <strong>and</strong> Hench, 2004; Lewin, 2005; Yu, 1999; <strong>and</strong><br />
various papers by the present authors)<br />
11 Hayek’s 1974 Nobel Prize in economics was awarded for his technical work on the<br />
business cycle <strong>and</strong> not, as is commonly believed, for his later work on knowledge <strong>and</strong><br />
“spontaneous order.” For a modern restatement of Austrian business cycle theory, see<br />
Garrison (2000).<br />
12 For overviews see Strigl (1934), Kirzner (1966), <strong>and</strong> Lewin (1999).
76 <br />
a time dimension as well as a value dimension. Carl Menger (1871),<br />
founder of the Austrian school, characterized goods in terms of “orders”:<br />
goods of lowest order are those consumed directly. Tools <strong>and</strong> machines<br />
used to produce those consumption goods are of a higher order, <strong>and</strong> the<br />
capital goods used to produce the tools <strong>and</strong> machines are of an even higher<br />
order. Building on his theory that the value of all goods is determined by<br />
their ability to satisfy consumer wants (i.e. their marginal utility), Menger<br />
showed that the value of the higher-order goods is given or “imputed” by<br />
the value of the lower-order goods they produce. Moreover, because certain<br />
capital goods are themselves produced by other, higher-order capital<br />
goods, it follows that capital goods are not identical, at least by the time<br />
they are employed in the production process. e claim is not that there is<br />
no substitution among capital goods, but that: the degree of substitution<br />
is limited; as Lachmann (1956) put it, capital goods are characterized by<br />
“multiple specificity.” Some substitution is possible, but only at a cost. 13<br />
Kirzner (1966) added an important refinement to the Austrian theory<br />
of capital by emphasizing the role of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> (the theme that<br />
dominates Kirzner’s later, better known, work). Earlier Austrian writers,<br />
particularly Böhm-Bawerk, tried to characterize the economy’s capital<br />
structure in terms of its physical attributes, Böhm-Bawerk attempted to<br />
describe the temporal “length” of the structure of production by a single<br />
number, the “average period of production.” Kirzner’s approach avoids<br />
these difficulties by defining capital assets in terms of subjective, individual<br />
production plans, plans that are formulated <strong>and</strong> continually revised by<br />
profit-seeking <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s. Capital goods should thus be characterized,<br />
not by their physical properties, but by their place in the structure of<br />
13 Hayek’s Prices <strong>and</strong> Production (1931) emphasized the relationship between the value<br />
of capital goods <strong>and</strong> their place in the temporal sequence of production. Because production<br />
takes time, factors of production must be committed in the present for making<br />
final goods that will have value only in the future after they are sold. However, capital<br />
is heterogeneous. As capital goods are used in production, they are transformed from<br />
general-purpose materials <strong>and</strong> components to intermediate products specific to particular<br />
final goods. Consequently, these assets cannot be easily redeployed to alternative uses<br />
if dem<strong>and</strong>s for final goods change. e central macroeconomic problem in a modern<br />
capital-using economy is thus one of intertemporal coordination: how can the allocation<br />
of resources between capital <strong>and</strong> consumer goods be aligned with consumers’ preferences<br />
between present <strong>and</strong> future consumption? In e Pure eory of Capital (1941) Hayek<br />
describes how the economy’s structure of production depends on the characteristics of<br />
capital goods durability, complementarity, substitutability, specificity, <strong>and</strong> so on.
77<br />
production as conceived by <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s. e actual place of any capital<br />
good in the time sequence of production is given by the market for capital<br />
goods, in which <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s bid for factors of production in anticipation<br />
of future consumer dem<strong>and</strong>s. is subjectivist, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial approach<br />
to capital assets is particularly congenial to theories of the firm that focus<br />
on <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship <strong>and</strong> the ownership of assets. 14<br />
Underst<strong>and</strong>ing Capital Heterogeneity<br />
e Austrian approach to capital generated considerable controversy, both<br />
within the school itself <strong>and</strong> between the Austrians <strong>and</strong> rival schools of economic<br />
thought. Given the attention devoted to the problem of measuring<br />
a heterogeneous capital stock, it is surprising that relatively little analytical<br />
effort has been devoted to the concept of heterogeneity itself. e notion<br />
of heterogeneous capital is crucial not just for Austrian capital theory, but<br />
for (Austrian) economics in general. For example, the Austrian position<br />
in the socialist calculation debate of the 1930s (Hayek, 1933a; Mises,<br />
1920) is based on an <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial concept of the market process, one in<br />
which the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>’s primary function is to choose among the various<br />
combinations of factors suitable for producing particular goods (<strong>and</strong> to<br />
decide whether these goods should be produced at all), based on current<br />
prices for the factors <strong>and</strong> expected future prices of the final goods. If<br />
capital is shmoo with one price, then <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship is reduced to choosing<br />
between shmoo-intensive <strong>and</strong> labor-intensive production methods (or<br />
among types of labor), a problem a central planner could potentially solve.<br />
e failure of socialism, in Mises’s (1920) formulation, follows precisely<br />
from the complexity of the economy’s capital structure, <strong>and</strong> the subsequent<br />
need for <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial judgment. As Lachmann (1956, p. 16) points<br />
out, real-world <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship consists primarily of choosing among<br />
combinations of capital assets:<br />
[T]he <strong>entrepreneur</strong>’s function ... is to specify <strong>and</strong> make decisions<br />
14 Penrose (1959) also emphasizes the subjectivity of the firm’s perceived opportunity set<br />
(Kor <strong>and</strong> Mahoney, 2000). In her approach, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s must learn how best to deploy<br />
their productive resources; because learning is idiosyncratic, firms with similar stocks of<br />
physical resources may differ in their strategic opportunities. Our emphasis on subjectively<br />
perceived attributes of capital assets may be seen as an example of a Penrosian perceived<br />
‘opportunity’ set. Kirzner’s concept of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial “alertness,” by contrast, is not a<br />
learned skill, but a talent or ability that is not subject to further explanation.
78 <br />
on the concrete form the capital resources shall have. He specifies<br />
<strong>and</strong> modifies the layout of his plant.... As long as we disregard the<br />
heterogeneity of capital, the true function of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> must<br />
also remain hidden.<br />
Kirzner’s argument that capital goods are heterogeneous not because of<br />
their objective characteristics, but because they play particular roles within<br />
the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>’s overall production plan, further developed the link between<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship <strong>and</strong> capital heterogeneity.<br />
In our interpretation, as discussed above <strong>and</strong> in Foss <strong>and</strong> Foss (2001),<br />
capital goods are distinguished by their attributes, using Barzel’s (1997)<br />
terminology. As Alchian <strong>and</strong> Demsetz (1972, p. 793) note, “[e]fficient<br />
production with heterogeneous resources is a result not of having better resources<br />
but in knowing more accurately the relative productive performances<br />
of those resources.” Contra the production function view in basic neoclassical<br />
economics, such knowledge is not given, but has to be created or discovered.<br />
Even in the literature on opportunity creation <strong>and</strong> exploitation,<br />
in which <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial objectives are seen as emerging endogenously<br />
from project champions’ creative imaginations, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial means (resources)<br />
are typically taken as given (see, for example Sarasvathy, 2001).<br />
Heterogeneous Assets, Property Rights, <strong>and</strong> Ownership<br />
Focusing on attributes not only helps conceptualize heterogeneous capital,<br />
but also illuminates the vast literature on property rights <strong>and</strong> ownership.<br />
Barzel (1997) stresses that property rights are held over attributes; in his<br />
work, property rights to known attributes of assets are the relevant units<br />
of analysis. In contrast, he dismisses the notion of asset ownership as<br />
essentially legal <strong>and</strong> extra-economic. Similarly, Demsetz (1988a, p. 19)<br />
argues that the notion of “full private ownership” over assets is “vague,” <strong>and</strong><br />
“must always remain so” because “there is an infinity of potential rights of<br />
actions that can be owned. . . . It is impossible to describe the complete set<br />
of rights that are potentially ownable.”<br />
However, as we noted above, most assets have unspecified, unknown<br />
future attributes, <strong>and</strong> an important function of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship is to create<br />
or discover these attributes. Contrary to Demsetz, it is exactly this<br />
feature that creates a distinct role for asset ownership, the acquisition of<br />
legal title to a bundle of existing <strong>and</strong> future attributes. Specifically, own-
79<br />
ership is a low-cost means of allocating the rights to attributes of assets<br />
that are created or discovered by the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>-owner. For instance,<br />
those who create or discover new knowledge have an incentive to use it<br />
directly because it is costly to transfer knowledge to others. In a wellfunctioning<br />
legal system, ownership of an asset normally implies that the<br />
courts will not interfere when an <strong>entrepreneur</strong>-owner captures the value of<br />
newly created or discovered attributes of an asset he owns. Consequently,<br />
the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>-owner can usually avoid costly negotiation with those<br />
who are affected by his creation or discovery. Moreover, asset ownership<br />
itself provides a powerful incentive to create or discover new attributes,<br />
as ownership conveys the legally recognized (<strong>and</strong> at least partly enforced)<br />
right to the income of an asset, including the right to income from new<br />
attributes.<br />
Heterogeneous Capital <strong>and</strong> Experimental Entrepreneurship<br />
e Austrian idea of heterogeneous capital is thus a natural complement<br />
to the theory of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship. 15 Entrepreneurs who seek to create or<br />
discover new attributes of capital assets will want ownership titles to the<br />
relevant assets, both for speculative reasons <strong>and</strong> for reasons of economizing<br />
on transaction costs. ese arguments provide room for <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship<br />
that goes beyond deploying a superior combination of capital assets with<br />
“given” attributes, acquiring the relevant assets, <strong>and</strong> deploying these to<br />
producing for a market; <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship may also be a matter of experimenting<br />
with capital assets in an attempt to discover new valued attributes.<br />
Such experimental activity may take place in the context of trying out<br />
new combinations through the acquisition of or merger with other firms,<br />
or in the form of trying out new combinations of assets already under the<br />
control of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>. e <strong>entrepreneur</strong>’s success in experimenting<br />
with assets in this manner depends not only on his ability to anticipate<br />
future prices <strong>and</strong> market conditions, but also on internal <strong>and</strong> external<br />
transaction costs, the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>’s control over the relevant assets, how<br />
much of the expected return from experimental activity he can hope to<br />
15 We note in passing that the underst<strong>and</strong>ing of management may also be furthered by<br />
beginning from heterogeneous capital assets <strong>and</strong> the need for coordination they imply.<br />
From a resource-based view, Mahoney (1995) argues that an important function of management<br />
is the coordination of such assets.
80 <br />
appropriate, <strong>and</strong> so on. Moreover, these latter factors are key determinants<br />
of economic organization in modern theories of the firm, which<br />
suggests that there may be fruitful complementarities between the theory<br />
of economic organization <strong>and</strong> Austrian theories of capital heterogeneity<br />
<strong>and</strong> <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship.<br />
Organizing Heterogeneous Capital<br />
Here we show how Austrian notions of capital heterogeneity give additional<br />
insights into the theory of the firm. e key questions are why<br />
firms emerge <strong>and</strong> what explains their boundaries (scope) <strong>and</strong> internal organization.<br />
In the following, we relate these issues to our emphasis on<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship as judgment about organizing <strong>and</strong> using heterogeneous<br />
capital assets.<br />
The Emergence of the Firm<br />
Coase (1937) explained the firm as a means for economizing on transaction<br />
costs, a theme elaborated by Williamson (1975, 1985, 1996). Alchian<br />
<strong>and</strong> Demsetz (1972) viewed the firm as an (albeit imperfect) solution to<br />
the free-rider problem in team production. Resource-based theories emphasize<br />
the need to generate <strong>and</strong> internalize tacit knowledge. It is not<br />
obvious where the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> fits into these approaches, however. Our<br />
framework suggests a slightly different approach.<br />
INCOMPLETE MARKETS FOR JUDGMENT. Agents may realize rents from their<br />
human capital through three means: (1) selling labor services on market<br />
conditions; (2) entering into employment contracts; or (3) starting a firm.<br />
As Barzel (1987) argues, moral hazard implies that options (1) <strong>and</strong> (2) are<br />
often inefficient means of realizing rents. In other words, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s<br />
know themselves to be good risks but are unable to communicate this to the<br />
market. For this reason, firms may emerge because the person whose services<br />
are the most difficult to measure (<strong>and</strong> therefore are most susceptible to<br />
moral hazard <strong>and</strong> adverse selection) becomes an <strong>entrepreneur</strong>, employing<br />
<strong>and</strong> supervising other agents, <strong>and</strong> committing capital of his own to the<br />
venture, thus contributing a bond.<br />
However, there are other reasons why the market may not be able to<br />
evaluate <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial services. For example, Kirzner (1979, p. 181) ar-
81<br />
gues that “<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship reveals to the market what the market did not<br />
realize was available, or indeed, needed at all.” Casson (1982, p. 14) takes a<br />
more Schumpeterian position, arguing that “[t]he <strong>entrepreneur</strong> believes he<br />
is right, while everyone else is wrong. us the essence of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship<br />
is being different because one has a different perception of the situation”<br />
(see also Casson, 1997). In this situation, non-contractibility arises because<br />
“[t]he decisive factors . . . are so largely on the inside of the person making<br />
the decision that the ‘instances’ are not amenable to objective description<br />
<strong>and</strong> external control” (Knight, 1921, p. 251). Hence moral hazard is not<br />
the only important factor underlying non-contractibility. An agent may<br />
be unable to communicate his “vision” of a commercial experiment as<br />
a specific way of combining heterogeneous capital assets to serve future<br />
consumer wants in such a way that other agents can assess its economic<br />
implications. In such a case, he cannot be an employee, but will instead<br />
start his own firm. e existence of the firm can thus be explained by a<br />
specific category of transaction costs, namely, those that close the market<br />
for <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial judgment.<br />
Note that in a world of uncertainty <strong>and</strong> change, these factors explain<br />
not only the emergence of new firms, but also the ongoing operations<br />
of existing firms. e <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial process of combining <strong>and</strong> recombining<br />
heterogeneous resources plays out continually, through time, as<br />
new attributes are created or discovered (<strong>and</strong> as consumer preferences <strong>and</strong><br />
technological capabilities change). In our framework, the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
act is not restricted to new venture formation; <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial judgment is<br />
necessarily exercised on an ongoing basis. Our approach is thus inconsistent<br />
with what we perceive as an undue emphasis on new venture creation<br />
in the applied <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship literature.<br />
Finally, there is an important sense in which judgment can never be<br />
fully delegated. Resource owners, by possessing residual rights of control,<br />
are the decision-makers of last resort, no matter how many day-to-day decision<br />
rights they delegate to hired managers. Jensen (1989) famously distinguished<br />
“active” from “passive” investors. Active investors are those “who<br />
hold large equity or debt positions, sit on boards of directors, monitor <strong>and</strong><br />
sometimes dismiss management, are involved with the long-term strategic<br />
direction of the companies they invest in, <strong>and</strong> sometimes manage the<br />
companies themselves” Jensen (1989, p. 65). While not denying the importance<br />
of this distinction, we argue that residual control rights make all
82 <br />
resource owners “active,” in the sense that they must exercise judgment over<br />
the use of their resources. In our approach, investors choose how “Jensenactive”<br />
they wish to be, which makes them “active” by definition. 16<br />
FIRMS AS CONTROLLED EXPERIMENTS. e idea of incomplete markets for<br />
judgment helps us underst<strong>and</strong> the one-person firm. However, similar<br />
ideas may also be useful for underst<strong>and</strong>ing the multi-person firm. For<br />
instance, as discussed above, when capital is homogenous it is easy to<br />
conceive, coordinate, <strong>and</strong> implement plans for producing, marketing, <strong>and</strong><br />
selling goods <strong>and</strong> services. e decision problem is one of choosing the<br />
intensities with which shmoo is applied to various activities. In the real<br />
world of heterogeneous capital assets, by contrast, production plans are<br />
much more difficult to conceive, coordinate, <strong>and</strong> implement. It is not<br />
necessarily obvious to which activities capital goods are most profitably<br />
applied <strong>and</strong> account has to be taken of complex relations between capital<br />
goods.<br />
Given that the optimal relationships among assets are generally unknown<br />
ex ante, <strong>and</strong> often so complex that resorting to analytical methods<br />
is not possible (Galloway, 1996), some experimentation is necessary. First,<br />
one must isolate the system boundaries, that is, where the relevant relationships<br />
among assets are most likely to be. Second, the experimental process<br />
must be like a controlled experiment (or a sequence of such experiments)<br />
to isolate the system from outside disturbances. ird, there must be some<br />
sort of guidance for the experiment. is may take many forms, ranging<br />
from centrally provided instructions to negotiated agreements to shared<br />
underst<strong>and</strong>ings of where to begin experimenting, how to avoid overlapping<br />
experiments, how to revise the experiment in light of past results, <strong>and</strong> so<br />
on. e central problem is how this experimental process is best organized.<br />
Does the need for experimentation help explain the existence of the firm,<br />
or can such experimentation be organized efficiently through markets?<br />
In a world of complete knowledge <strong>and</strong> zero transaction costs, all rights<br />
to all uses of all assets could be specified in contracts. By contrast, in a<br />
world of heterogeneous assets with attributes that are costly to measure <strong>and</strong><br />
partly unforeseen, complete contracts cannot be drafted. e resulting set<br />
of incomplete contracts may constitute a firm, a process of coordination<br />
16 See the discussion in chapter 2 above on “Firms as Investments” <strong>and</strong> “Financiers as<br />
Entrepreneurs.”
83<br />
managed by the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>’s central direction. If relationship-specific<br />
assets are involved, the holdup problem described above becomes a serious<br />
concern.<br />
us, asset specificity may itself be an outcome of an experimental process.<br />
To be sure, Williamson (e.g., 1985, 1996) clearly allows for intertemporal<br />
considerations relating to what he calls the “fundamental transformation”<br />
(i.e., the transformation of large numbers to small numbers situation,<br />
<strong>and</strong> therefore the emergence of asset specificity). However, he<br />
doesn’t describe this process in much detail. In the present approach,<br />
as experimental activity provides information about how to organize the<br />
system, assets will be increasingly specific in time <strong>and</strong> location. Temporal<br />
<strong>and</strong> site specificity will tend to increase as assets become more efficiently<br />
coordinated. is provides one rationale for organizing the experiments<br />
inside firms. Firms may also be justified by problems associated with the<br />
dispersion of knowledge across agents. Production systems may exhibit<br />
multiple equilibria, <strong>and</strong> it may not be obvious how to coordinate on a<br />
particular equilibrium or even which equilibria are preferred.<br />
In principle, an experimenting team could hire an outside consultant<br />
who guides the experimental activity, giving advice on the sequence of<br />
actions <strong>and</strong> asset uses, initiating the experiments, drawing the appropriate<br />
conclusions from each experiment, determining how these conclusions<br />
should influence further experimentation, <strong>and</strong> so on. However, such an<br />
arrangement is likely to run into serious bargaining costs. Under market<br />
contracting any team member can veto the advice provided by the consultant,<br />
<strong>and</strong> submitting to authority may be the least costly way to organize<br />
the experimental activity. “Authority” here means that the <strong>entrepreneur</strong><br />
has the right to redefine <strong>and</strong> reallocate decision rights among team members<br />
<strong>and</strong> to sanction team members who do not use their decision rights<br />
efficiently. By possessing these rights, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>-managers can conduct<br />
experiments without continuously having to renegotiate contracts, saving<br />
bargaining <strong>and</strong> drafting costs. Such an arrangement then provides a setting<br />
for carrying out “controlled” experiments in which the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>manager<br />
changes only some aspects of the relevant tasks to trace the effects<br />
of specific rearrangements of rights. Establishing these property rights is<br />
tantamount to forming a firm.
84 <br />
The Boundaries of the Firm<br />
In the approach developed in this chapter, the theory of firm boundaries is<br />
closely related to the theory of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship. Mergers, acquisitions, divestitures,<br />
<strong>and</strong> other reorganizations can generate efficiencies by replacing<br />
poorly performing managers, creating operating synergies, or establishing<br />
internal capital markets. Like other business practices that do not conform<br />
to textbook models of competition, mergers, acquisitions, <strong>and</strong> financial<br />
restructurings have long been viewed with suspicion by some commentators<br />
<strong>and</strong> regulatory authorities. However, the academic literature clearly<br />
suggests that corporate restructurings do, on average, increase shareholder<br />
value (Jarrell, et al., 1988; Andrade, et al., 2001). Given such benefits, why<br />
are many mergers later “reversed” in a divestiture, spin-off, or carve-out?<br />
Chapter 3 above distinguishes between two basic views. e first, a kind<br />
of empire building, holds that entrenched managers make acquisitions<br />
primarily to increase their own power, prestige, or control, producing<br />
negligible efficiency gains, <strong>and</strong> that acquisitions by manager-controlled<br />
firms are likely to be divested ex post. An alternative view acknowledges that<br />
unprofitable acquisitions may be “mistakes” ex post, but argues that poor<br />
long-term performance does not indicate ex ante inefficiency. A divestiture<br />
of previously acquired assets may mean simply that profit-seeking <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s<br />
have updated their forecasts of future conditions or otherwise<br />
learned from experience. ey are adjusting structure of heterogeneous<br />
capital assets specific to their firms.<br />
Chapter 3 discusses empirical evidence that the long-term success or<br />
failure of corporate acquisitions cannot, in general, be predicted by measures<br />
of manager control or principal–agent problems. However, significantly<br />
higher rates of divestiture tend to follow mergers that occur in a<br />
cluster of mergers in the same industry. As argued by Mitchell <strong>and</strong> Mulherin<br />
(1996), Andrade, et al. (2001), <strong>and</strong> Andrade <strong>and</strong> Stafford (2004),<br />
mergers frequently occur in industry clusters, suggesting that mergers are<br />
driven in part by industry-specific factors, such as regulatory shocks. When<br />
an industry is regulated, deregulated, or re-regulated, economic calculation<br />
becomes more difficult, <strong>and</strong> <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial activity is hampered. It should<br />
not be surprising that poor long-term performance is more likely under<br />
those conditions.
85<br />
Internal Organization<br />
As Foss <strong>and</strong> Klein (2005) point out, most existing approaches to <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship,<br />
even if linked to the existence of firms, say little about the<br />
key questions of internal organization: How should decision rights be assigned?<br />
How should employees be motivated <strong>and</strong> evaluated? How should<br />
firms be divided into divisions <strong>and</strong> departments? e notion of judgmentbased<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship offers insight into these questions as well.<br />
PRODUCTIVE AND DESTRUCTIVE ENTREPRENEURSHIP. Consider first the<br />
way firm structure affects the exercise of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial judgment—or a<br />
proxy version of such judgment—within the organization. In much of<br />
the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship literature, there is a general, though usually implicit<br />
claim that all <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial activity is socially beneficial (Kirzner, 1973;<br />
Mises, 1949). However, as Baumol (1990) <strong>and</strong> Holcombe (2002) point<br />
out, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship may be socially harmful if it takes the form of<br />
rent-seeking, attempts to influence governments (or management) to<br />
redistribute income in a way that consumes resources <strong>and</strong> brings about<br />
a social loss. It is therefore necessary to introduce a distinction between<br />
productive <strong>and</strong> destructive <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship.<br />
In the context of firm organization, “destructive <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship” can<br />
refer to agents’ effort to create or discover new attributes <strong>and</strong> take control<br />
over these in such a way that firm value is reduced. us, discovering new<br />
forms of moral hazard (Holmström, 1982), creating holdups (Williamson,<br />
1996), <strong>and</strong> inventing new ways of engaging in rent-seeking activities<br />
(Baumol, 1990; Holcombe, 2002) are examples of destructive <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship.<br />
“Productive <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship” refers to the creation or discovery<br />
of new attributes leading to an increase in firm value. For example, a<br />
franchisee may discover new local tastes that in turn may form the basis for<br />
new products for the entire chain; an employee may figure out better uses<br />
of production assets <strong>and</strong> communicate this to the TQM team of which he<br />
is a member; a CEO may formulate a new business concept; etc. In the<br />
following, we use this distinction to sketch an <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial approach to<br />
internal organization. Note that we here use the term “<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship”<br />
more broadly than before, referring not only to decisions made by resource<br />
owners (<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship in the strict sense), but also to decisions made<br />
by employees, acting as proxy decision makers for the resource owners.<br />
Foss, Foss, <strong>and</strong> Klein (2007) refer to employee exercise of this discretion
86 <br />
as derived judgment, meaning judgment that is derived from the owner’s<br />
original judgment.<br />
FUNDAMENTAL TRADEOFFS IN INTERNAL ORGANIZATION. e first such<br />
problem concerns the control of destructive <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial activities. For<br />
example, firms may delimit employees’ use of telephone <strong>and</strong> Internet<br />
services by closely specifying their use rights over the relevant assets,<br />
instructing them to act in a proper manner towards customers <strong>and</strong> to<br />
exercise care when operating the firm’s equipment, <strong>and</strong> the like. However,<br />
firms are unlikely to succeed entirely in their attempt to curb such<br />
activities. Monitoring employees may be costly; moreover, employees<br />
may creatively circumvent constraints, for example by inventing ways<br />
to hide their behavior. Although firms may know that such destructive<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship takes place, they may prefer not to try to constrain it<br />
further. is is because the various constraints that firms impose on<br />
employees (or, more generally, that contracting partners impose on each<br />
other) to curb destructive <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship may have the unwanted side<br />
effect that productive <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship is stifled (see Kirzner, 1985a).<br />
More generally, imposing (too many) constraints on employees may<br />
reduce their propensity to create or discover new attributes of productive<br />
assets. At any rate, many firms increasingly appear to operate on the<br />
presumption that beneficial effects may be produced by reducing constraints<br />
on employees in various dimensions. For example, firms such<br />
as 3M give research employees time to use however they wish, in the<br />
hope of stimulating serendipitous discoveries. Many consulting firms do<br />
something similar. More generally, industrial firms have long known that<br />
employees with many decision rights—researchers, for example—must be<br />
monitored <strong>and</strong> constrained in different, <strong>and</strong> typically much looser, ways<br />
than those employees charged only with routine tasks. More broadly,<br />
the increasing emphasis on “empowerment” during recent decades reflects<br />
a realization that employees derive a benefit from controlling aspects of<br />
their job situation. Moreover, the total quality movement emphasizes that<br />
delegating various rights to employees motivates them to find new ways to<br />
increase the mean <strong>and</strong> reduce the variance of quality (Jensen <strong>and</strong> Wruck,<br />
1994). To the extent that such activities increase firm value, they represent<br />
productive <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship.
87<br />
Stimulating the productive creation <strong>and</strong> discovery of new attributes<br />
by relaxing constraints on employees results in principal–agent relationships<br />
that are less completely specified. is is not simply a matter of<br />
delegation, or co-locating decision rights <strong>and</strong> specific knowledge (Jensen<br />
<strong>and</strong> Meckling, 1992), but also giving agents opportunities to exercise their<br />
own, often far-reaching, judgments. However, as we have seen, this also<br />
permits potentially destructive <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship. Managing the tradeoff<br />
between productive <strong>and</strong> destructive <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship thus becomes a critical<br />
management task.<br />
CHOOSING EFFICIENT TRADEOFFS. In this context, asset ownership is important<br />
because it gives <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s the right to define contractual constraints,<br />
that is, to choose their own preferred tradeoffs. Briefly stated,<br />
ownership allows the employer-<strong>entrepreneur</strong>’s preferred degree of contractual<br />
incompleteness <strong>and</strong> therefore a certain combination of productive <strong>and</strong><br />
destructive <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship to be implemented at low cost. is function<br />
of ownership is particularly important in a dynamic market process, the<br />
kind stressed by Knight (in the later chapters of Knight, 1921) <strong>and</strong> the<br />
Austrians. In such a context, an ongoing process of judgmental decision<br />
making requires contractual constraints to address the changing tradeoffs<br />
between productive <strong>and</strong> destructive <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship inside the firm. e<br />
power conferred by ownership allows the employer-<strong>entrepreneur</strong> to do this<br />
at low cost. 17<br />
Concluding Discussion<br />
is chapter emphasizes the importance of capital heterogeneity for theories<br />
of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship <strong>and</strong> the firm. If capital were homogeneous, the<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial act would be trivial. Many, if not most, of the interesting<br />
problems of economic organization would disappear. is implies that<br />
the theory of capital should be an integral part of theories of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship<br />
<strong>and</strong> economic organization. It also suggests extending the Austrian<br />
emphasis on <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship in markets to <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship in firms. 18<br />
17 For a fuller analysis of this point see Foss <strong>and</strong> Foss (2002).<br />
18 e alert reader will notice that while we enthusiastically endorse Kirzner’s contributions<br />
to the Austrian theory of capital, our own conception of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship differs<br />
substantially from his. Chapter 5 below explores this distinction in greater detail.
88 <br />
However, the concept of capital heterogeneity does more than simply<br />
establish the necessary conditions for <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship <strong>and</strong> the typical<br />
problems of economic organization. Taking fuller account of heterogeneous<br />
capital, as developed by the Austrian school, reveals exchange problems<br />
(i.e. transaction costs) that are relevant to economic organization<br />
but neglected in mainstream theories of the firm. 19 In a setting with<br />
heterogeneous capital <strong>and</strong> uncertainty, the process of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial experimentation<br />
has distinct implications for economic organization. As we<br />
have argued, the process of experimenting with heterogeneous capital may<br />
be best organized within a firm, helping to explain why firms emerge. Similarly,<br />
experiments with heterogeneous capital assets may underlie much<br />
of the observed dynamics of the boundaries of firms. us, it is not a<br />
priori known whether capital assets controlled by potential takeover target<br />
will be a good fit with the firm’s assets; this has to be tried out in an<br />
experimental fashion. Finally, we have argued that internal organization<br />
is also illuminated by a focus on judgment, heterogeneous capital, <strong>and</strong><br />
experimentation.<br />
To be sure, our analysis so far is preliminary <strong>and</strong> incomplete. We<br />
have concentrated on exploring the links between Austrian economics <strong>and</strong><br />
conventional approaches to economic organization. 20 Because we offer<br />
here an exploratory, suggestive treatment, we have not described specific<br />
causal mechanisms <strong>and</strong> have not put any explicit, testable propositions on<br />
the table.<br />
However, our approach is potentially rich in explanatory power. For<br />
example, because <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial judgment requires resource ownership,<br />
the theory of employment—the contractual relations between the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s<br />
<strong>and</strong> those they hire to help them execute their plans—is ultimately<br />
a theory of delegation. Judgment, as the ultimate decision-making<br />
factor of production (in Grossman <strong>and</strong> Hart’s terminology, the residual<br />
rights of control) cannot be delegated, by definition. But many other<br />
proximate decision rights can, <strong>and</strong> frequently are, delegated to employees.<br />
Operationalizing this insight, <strong>and</strong> deriving testable implications from<br />
it, can be done by identifying the circumstances under which particular<br />
19 In contrast, our emphasis on underst<strong>and</strong>ing economic organization in a dynamic<br />
context has obvious parallels to Langlois’s (1992) notion of “dynamic transaction costs.”<br />
20 See Shook, Priem, <strong>and</strong> McGee (2003) for ideas on empirical research on the behavioral<br />
aspects of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial judgment.
89<br />
decision rights (what we may call derived judgment) can be delegated to<br />
particular individuals. ese circumstances can be described by characteristics<br />
of the business environment (technology, markets, regulation),<br />
employees’ human capital (what Schultz, 1975, calls “the ability to deal<br />
with disequilibria”), <strong>and</strong> aspects of firm strategy. Consider the following<br />
applications.<br />
DECENTRALIZATION. One approach to delegation is to build on the literature<br />
on optimal decentralization, such as Jensen <strong>and</strong> Meckling’s (1992) important<br />
(<strong>and</strong>, in our judgment, under-appreciated) application of Hayek’s<br />
<strong>and</strong> Polanyi’s theory of knowledge to internal organization. Jensen <strong>and</strong><br />
Meckling identify some benefits <strong>and</strong> costs of decentralizing decision rights<br />
to lower levels of an organization. e primary benefit is more effective<br />
use of specific (local, tacit) knowledge, while costs include potential agency<br />
problems <strong>and</strong> less effective use of central information. Decentralization, in<br />
Jensen <strong>and</strong> Meckling’s terminology, achieves the co-location of knowledge<br />
<strong>and</strong> decision rights. Employees who are not owners, however, exercise<br />
only derived judgment, no matter how many decision rights they hold.<br />
Optimal decentralization can thus be interpreted in terms of the tradeoff<br />
between knowledge <strong>and</strong> judgment. Assigning decision rights to employees<br />
co-locates specific knowledge <strong>and</strong> derived judgment, while judgment itself<br />
remains in the h<strong>and</strong>s of owners. e decision to decentralize therefore<br />
depends not only on the importance of specific knowledge, but on the<br />
“wedge” between ultimate <strong>and</strong> derived judgment. Where environmental<br />
uncertainty is high, this wedge may be sufficiently large that decentralization<br />
reduces firm value, even controlling for the importance of specific<br />
knowledge.<br />
OCCUPATIONAL CHOICE. Another application relates to the literature on<br />
occupational choice. Many studies of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship treat <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship<br />
as an occupation (i.e. self-employment), rather than a function, as we<br />
treat it here (see, for example, Hamilton, 2000). What is the correlation<br />
between self-employment <strong>and</strong> judgment? Self-employed individuals who<br />
finance their ventures with debt or personal savings are surely acting as<br />
Knightian <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s. If a new venture is financed with equity, then<br />
in our framework it is the financier—the venture <strong>capitalist</strong> or angel investor,<br />
for example—who is bearing the relevant uncertainty <strong>and</strong> therefore
90 <br />
performing the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial function, not the firm founder (except to<br />
the extent that the founder’s compensation is a function of the outcome<br />
of the venture). We are unaware of existing empirical work relating selfemployment<br />
to the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial function, though such work should<br />
be important in underst<strong>and</strong>ing the role of self-employment in generating<br />
economic growth.<br />
CONTRACT DESIGN. Moreover, our approach to the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial function<br />
has implications for contract design. If we think of judgment as filling<br />
in the gaps of incomplete contracts, then the more complete the contract,<br />
the fewer circumstances in which “ultimate judgment” must be exercised,<br />
<strong>and</strong> hence the more decision rights that can be delegated. is implies<br />
an inverse relationship between contractual completeness <strong>and</strong> monitoring<br />
costs. While several TCE papers examine the determinants of completeness<br />
(Crocker <strong>and</strong> Masten, 1991; Crocker <strong>and</strong> Reynolds, 1993; Saussier,<br />
2000), they generally focus on asset specificity, not monitoring costs, as<br />
the independent variable.<br />
ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING. Our approach also has implications for organizational<br />
learning. If <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, <strong>and</strong> hence economic organization,<br />
is the act of arranging heterogeneous capital resources, then it is<br />
important to underst<strong>and</strong> how individuals <strong>and</strong> teams learn to do this successfully.<br />
Mayer <strong>and</strong> Argyres (2004) show that contracting parties do<br />
not necessarily anticipate contractual hazards, <strong>and</strong> design arrangements<br />
to mitigate them, as TCE predicts; rather, contracting parties must often<br />
experience maladaptation to adjust to it. It is thus important to underst<strong>and</strong><br />
not only efficient contracting, but the process of learning to contract efficiently.<br />
In our framework, contracting—an exchange of legal rights <strong>and</strong><br />
responsibilities governing the exchange of property titles—is part of the<br />
process of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial experimentation. Just as asset attributes must<br />
be created or discovered over time, the efficient contractual arrangements<br />
governing asset uses must be created or discovered over time, through<br />
experimentation. Conceiving the problem this way calls for a theory of<br />
learning to organize heterogeneous capital.<br />
More generally, we hope the analysis here inspires researchers to investigate<br />
the Austrian approach to capital <strong>and</strong> to explore its applications<br />
not only to the theory of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, but also to other aspects of
91<br />
economic organization <strong>and</strong> management. Management scholars are beginning<br />
to recognize the value of Austrian economics beyond generalities<br />
about the “market process” or “alertness.” (Lachmann’s capital theory, for<br />
example, features prominently in Chiles <strong>and</strong> Zarankin 2005; Chiles, Bluedorn,<br />
<strong>and</strong> Gupta 2007; Lewin 2005; Lewin <strong>and</strong> Phelan 2002.) We hope<br />
that researchers seeking to incorporate the concept of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship<br />
into organization, strategy, <strong>and</strong> the theory of the firm will consider the<br />
Austrian notion of capital heterogeneity as a possible link between <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship<br />
<strong>and</strong> economic organization.
CHAPTER 5<br />
Opportunity Discovery <strong>and</strong> Entrepreneurial Action †<br />
Entrepreneurship is one of the fastest growing fields within economics,<br />
management, finance, <strong>and</strong> even law. Surprisingly, however, while the<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong> is fundamentally an economic agent—the driving force of the<br />
market, in Mises’s (1949, p. 249) phrase—modern theories of economic<br />
organization <strong>and</strong> strategy maintain an ambivalent relationship with <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship.<br />
It is widely recognized that <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship is somehow<br />
important, but there is little consensus about how the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial role<br />
should be modeled <strong>and</strong> incorporated into economics <strong>and</strong> strategy. Indeed,<br />
the most important works in the economic literature on <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship—Schumpeter’s<br />
account of innovation, Knight’s theory of profit, <strong>and</strong><br />
Kirzner’s analysis of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial discovery—are viewed as interesting,<br />
but idiosyncratic, insights that do not easily generalize to other contexts<br />
<strong>and</strong> problems.<br />
e awkward relationship between mainstream economics <strong>and</strong> <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship<br />
makes sense in the context of the development of the neoclassical<br />
theory of production <strong>and</strong> the firm. e increasingly formalized<br />
treatment of markets, notably in the form of general equilibrium theory,<br />
† Published originally as “Opportunity Discovery, Entrepreneurial Action, <strong>and</strong> Economic<br />
Organization” in Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal 2, no. 3 (2008): 175–90.<br />
93
94 <br />
not only made firms increasingly passive, it also made the model of the firm<br />
increasingly stylized <strong>and</strong> anonymous, doing away with those dynamic aspects<br />
of markets that are most closely related to <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship (O’Brien,<br />
1984). In particular, the development of what came to be known as the<br />
production-function view (Williamson, 1985; Langlois <strong>and</strong> Foss, 1999)—<br />
roughly, the firm as it is presented in intermediate microeconomics textbooks<br />
with its fully transparent production possibility sets—was a deathblow<br />
to the economic theory of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship. If any firm can do<br />
what any other firm does (Demsetz, 1988b), if all firms are always on<br />
their production possibility frontiers, <strong>and</strong> if firms always make optimal<br />
choices of input combinations <strong>and</strong> output levels, then there is nothing<br />
for the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> to do. Even in more advanced models of asymmetric<br />
production functions, hidden characteristics, <strong>and</strong> strategic interaction,<br />
firms or agents are modeled as behaving according to fixed rules subject<br />
to formalization by the analyst. e <strong>entrepreneur</strong> makes an occasional<br />
appearance in business history <strong>and</strong> in Schumpeterian models of innovation<br />
<strong>and</strong> technical change, but is largely absent from contemporary economic<br />
theory.<br />
One exception is the Austrian School, which has given the <strong>entrepreneur</strong><br />
a central role in the economy, at least since the proto-Austrian contribution<br />
of Richard Cantillon (1755). Key figures in the Austrian School,<br />
such as Carl Menger (1871), Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (1889), Ludwig<br />
von Mises (1949), <strong>and</strong> Murray Rothbard (1962) all emphasized the <strong>entrepreneur</strong><br />
in their causal-realistic analysis of economic organization <strong>and</strong> economic<br />
change. More recently, the Austrian economist Israel Kirzner has<br />
popularized the notion of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship as discovery or alertness to<br />
profit opportunities. Kirzner’s interpretation of Mises has been highly influential,<br />
not only within the Austrian School, but also in the opportunitydiscovery<br />
or opportunity-recognition branch of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship literature<br />
(Shane <strong>and</strong> Venkataraman, 2000; Gaglio <strong>and</strong> Katz, 2001; Shane, 2003).<br />
However, as described below, the opportunity-discovery framework<br />
is problematic as a foundation for applied <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship research. Its<br />
central concept, the opportunity, was intended by theorists such as Kirzner<br />
to be used instrumentally, or metaphorically, as a means of explaining<br />
the tendency of markets to equilibrate, <strong>and</strong> not meant to be treated literally<br />
as the object of analysis. I argue that <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship can be more<br />
thoroughly grounded <strong>and</strong> more closely linked to theories of economic
95<br />
organization <strong>and</strong> strategy by adopting the Cantillon–Knight–Mises underst<strong>and</strong>ing<br />
of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship as judgment, along with the Austrian School’s<br />
subjectivist account of capital heterogeneity. e judgment approach emphasizes<br />
that profit opportunities do not exist, objectively, when decisions<br />
are made, because the result of action cannot be known with certainty.<br />
Opportunities are essentially subjective phenomena (Foss, Klein, Kor, <strong>and</strong><br />
Mahoney, 2008). As such, opportunities are neither discovered nor created<br />
(Alvarez <strong>and</strong> Barney, 2007), but imagined. ey exist, in other words,<br />
only in the minds of decision-makers. Moreover, the essentially subjective<br />
character of profit opportunities poses special challenges for applied<br />
research on the cognitive psychological aspects of discovery. Rather, I<br />
argue, opportunities can be treated as a latent concept underlying the real<br />
phenomenon of interest, namely <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial action.<br />
I begin by distinguishing among occupational, structural, <strong>and</strong> functional<br />
approaches to <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship <strong>and</strong> explaining two influential interpretations<br />
of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial function—discovery <strong>and</strong> judgment. I<br />
turn next to the contemporary literature on opportunity identification,<br />
arguing that this literature misinterprets Kirzner’s instrumental use of the<br />
discovery metaphor <strong>and</strong> mistakenly makes opportunities the unit of analysis.<br />
Instead, I describe an alternative approach in which investment is<br />
the unit of analysis, <strong>and</strong> link this approach to the theory of heterogeneous<br />
capital theory. I close with some applications to organizational form <strong>and</strong><br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial teams.<br />
Entrepreneurship: Occupational, Structural, <strong>and</strong> Functional<br />
Perspectives<br />
To organize the various str<strong>and</strong>s of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship literature, it is useful<br />
to distinguish among occupational, structural, <strong>and</strong> functional perspectives.<br />
Occupational theories define <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship as self-employment<br />
<strong>and</strong> treat the individual as the unit of analysis, describing the characteristics<br />
of individuals who start their own businesses <strong>and</strong> explaining the choice<br />
between employment <strong>and</strong> self-employment (Kihlstrom <strong>and</strong> Laffont, 1979;<br />
Shaver <strong>and</strong> Scott, 1991; Hamilton, 2000; Parker, 2004; Lazear, 2004,<br />
2005). e labor economics literature on occupational choice, along with<br />
psychological literature on the personal characteristics of self-employed<br />
individuals, fits in this category. For example, McGrath <strong>and</strong> MacMillan
96 <br />
(2000) argue that particular individuals have an “<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial mindset”<br />
that enables <strong>and</strong> encourages them to find opportunities overlooked or<br />
ignored by others (<strong>and</strong> that this mindset is developed through experience,<br />
rather than formal instruction). Structural approaches treat the firm or<br />
industry as the unit of analysis, defining the “<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial firm” as a new<br />
or small firm. e literatures on industry dynamics, firm growth, clusters,<br />
<strong>and</strong> networks have a structural concept of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship in mind (Aldrich,<br />
1990; Acs <strong>and</strong> Audretsch, 1990; Audretsch, Keilbach, <strong>and</strong> Lehmann,<br />
2005). Indeed, the idea that one firm, industry, or economy can be more<br />
“<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial” than another suggests that <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship is associated<br />
with a particular market structure (i.e., lots of small or young firms).<br />
By contrast, the classic contributions to the economic theory of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship<br />
from Schumpeter, Knight, Mises, Kirzner, <strong>and</strong> others model<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship as a function, activity, or process, not an employment<br />
category or market structure. e <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial function has been characterized<br />
in various ways: judgment (Cantillon, 1755; Knight, 1921; Casson,<br />
1982; Langlois <strong>and</strong> Cosgel, 1993; Foss <strong>and</strong> Klein, 2005), innovation<br />
(Schumpeter, 1911), adaptation (Schultz, 1975, 1980), alertness (Kirzner,<br />
1973, 1979, 1992), <strong>and</strong> coordination (Witt, 1998, 2003). In each case,<br />
these functional concepts of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship are largely independent of<br />
occupational <strong>and</strong> structural concepts. e <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial function can be<br />
manifested in large <strong>and</strong> small firms, in old <strong>and</strong> new firms, by individuals or<br />
teams, across a variety of occupational categories, <strong>and</strong> so on. By focusing<br />
too narrowly on self-employment <strong>and</strong> start-up companies, the contemporary<br />
literature may be understating the role of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship in the<br />
economy <strong>and</strong> business organizations.<br />
Kirzner’s (1973; 1979; 1992) concept of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship as “alertness”<br />
to profit opportunities is one of the most influential functional approaches.<br />
e simplest case of alertness is that of the arbitrageur who<br />
discovers a discrepancy in present prices that can be exploited for financial<br />
gain. In a more typical case, the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> is alert to a new product or<br />
a superior production process <strong>and</strong> steps in to fill this market gap before<br />
others. Success, in this view, comes not from following a well-specified<br />
maximization problem, but from having some insight that no one else<br />
has, a process that cannot be modeled as an optimization problem. 1 As<br />
1 Kirzner is careful to distinguish alertness from systematic search, as in Stigler’s (1961;<br />
1962) analysis of searching for bargains or for jobs. A nice example is provided by Ricketts
97<br />
discussed in chapter 2 above, because Kirzner’s <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s perform only<br />
a discovery function, rather than an investment function, they do not own<br />
capital; they need only be alert to profit opportunities. ey own no assets,<br />
they bear no uncertainty <strong>and</strong>, hence, they cannot earn losses. e worst<br />
that can happen to an <strong>entrepreneur</strong> is the failure to discover an existing<br />
profit opportunity. For these reasons, the link between Kirznerian <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship<br />
<strong>and</strong> other branches of economic analysis, such as industrial<br />
organization, innovation, <strong>and</strong> the theory of the firm, is weak. Hence,<br />
Kirzner’s concept has not generated a large body of applications. 2<br />
An alternative account treats <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship as judgmental decision<br />
making under conditions of uncertainty. Judgment refers primarily to<br />
business when the range of possible future outcomes, let alone the likelihood<br />
of individual outcomes, is generally unknown (what Knight terms<br />
uncertainty, rather than mere probabilistic risk). is view finds expression<br />
in the earliest known discussion of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship—that found in<br />
Richard Cantillon’s Essai sur la nature de commerce en general (1755). Cantillon<br />
argues that all market participants, with the exception of l<strong>and</strong>owners<br />
<strong>and</strong> the nobility, can be classified as either <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s or wage earners:<br />
Entrepreneurs work for uncertain wages, so to speak, <strong>and</strong> all others<br />
for certain wages until they have them, although their functions <strong>and</strong><br />
their rank are very disproportionate. e General who has a salary,<br />
the Courtier who has a pension, <strong>and</strong> the Domestic who has wages,<br />
are in the latter class. All the others are Entrepreneurs, whether they<br />
establish themselves with a capital to carry on their enterprise, or are<br />
Entrepreneurs of their own work without any capital, <strong>and</strong> they may<br />
be considered as living subject to uncertainty; even Beggars <strong>and</strong><br />
Robbers are Entrepreneurs of this class (Cantillon, 1755, p. 54).<br />
(1987, p. 58): “Stigler’s searcher decides how much time it is worth spending rummaging<br />
through dusty attics <strong>and</strong> untidy drawers looking for a sketch which (the family recalls) Aunt<br />
Enid thought might be by Lautrec. Kirzner’s <strong>entrepreneur</strong> enters a house <strong>and</strong> glances lazily<br />
at the pictures which have been hanging in the same place for years. ‘Isn’t that a Lautrec<br />
on the wall?’ ”<br />
2 Exceptions include Ekelund <strong>and</strong> Saurman (1988), Harper (1995), Sautet (2001) <strong>and</strong><br />
Holcombe (2002). Kirzner (1973, pp. 39–40) concedes that in a world of uncertainty,<br />
resource owners exercise <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial judgment in allocating their resources to particular<br />
uses. But he goes on (1973, pp. 40–43) to introduce the analytical device of “pure<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship,” the act of discovery or alertness to profit opportunities by those with<br />
no resources under their control, <strong>and</strong> claims that this function, rather than uncertaintybearing,<br />
is the “driving force” behind the market economy.
98 <br />
Judgment is distinct from boldness, innovation, alertness, <strong>and</strong> leadership.<br />
Judgment must be exercised in mundane circumstances, for ongoing<br />
operations as well as new ventures. Alertness is the ability to react to existing<br />
opportunities, while judgment refers to beliefs about new opportunities. 3<br />
ose who specialize in judgmental decision making may be dynamic,<br />
charismatic leaders, but they need not possess these traits. In short, in<br />
this view, decision making under uncertainty is <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial, whether<br />
it involves imagination, creativity, leadership, <strong>and</strong> related factors or not.<br />
Knight introduces judgment to link profit <strong>and</strong> the firm to uncertainty.<br />
Entrepreneurship represents judgment that cannot be assessed in terms<br />
of its marginal product <strong>and</strong> which cannot, accordingly, be paid a wage<br />
(Knight, 1921, p. 311). In other words, there is no market for the judgment<br />
that <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s rely on <strong>and</strong>, therefore, exercising judgment requires<br />
the person with judgment to start a firm. Judgment, thus, implies<br />
asset ownership, for judgmental decision making is ultimately decision<br />
making about the employment of resources. An <strong>entrepreneur</strong> without capital<br />
goods is, in Knight’s sense, no <strong>entrepreneur</strong> (Foss <strong>and</strong> Klein, 2005). 4<br />
Entrepreneurship as uncertainty bearing is also important for Mises’s<br />
3 In Kirzner’s treatment, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship is characterized as “a responding agency. I<br />
view the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> not as a source of innovative ideas ex nihilo, but as being alert<br />
to the opportunities that exist already <strong>and</strong> are waiting to be noticed” (Kirzner, 1973,<br />
p. 74). Of course, as Kirzner (1985b, pp. 54–59) himself emphasizes, the actions of<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s in the present affect the constellation of possible profit opportunities in the<br />
future. “[Alertness] does not consist merely in seeing the unfolding of the tapestry of the<br />
future in the sense of seeing a preordained flow of events. Alertness must, importantly,<br />
embrace the awareness of the ways the human agent can, by imaginative, bold leaps of faith,<br />
<strong>and</strong> determination, in fact create the future for which his present acts are created” (Kirzner,<br />
1985b, p. 56). However, Kirzner (1985b, p. 57) continues, the only opportunities that<br />
matter for equilibration are those that do, in fact, “bear some realistic resemblance to the<br />
future as it will be realized.”<br />
4 It is useful here to distinguish between broad <strong>and</strong> narrow notions of (Knightian) <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship.<br />
All human action involves judgment, <strong>and</strong> in an uncertain world, all action<br />
places some assets at risk (at minimum, the opportunity cost of the actor’s time). In Mises’s<br />
terminology, human action is the purposeful employment of means to bring about desired<br />
ends, which may or may not be realized. In this sense, we are all <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s, every<br />
day. Of course, this broad concept of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship is not particularly operational, or<br />
empirically important. Economics <strong>and</strong> organization theorists, therefore, tend to focus on<br />
a narrower concept of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, namely the actions of the businessperson—the<br />
investment of tangible resources in pursuit of commercial gain. In the discussion that<br />
follows, I focus on this narrower, commercial notion of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship.
99<br />
theory of profit <strong>and</strong> loss—a cornerstone of his well-known critique of<br />
economic planning under socialism. Mises begins with the marginal productivity<br />
theory of distribution developed by his Austrian predecessors.<br />
In the marginal productivity theory, laborers earn wages, <strong>capitalist</strong>s earn<br />
interest, <strong>and</strong> owners of specific factors earn rents. Any excess (deficit) of a<br />
firm’s realized receipts over these factor payments constitutes profit (loss).<br />
Profit <strong>and</strong> loss, therefore, are returns to <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship. In a hypothetical<br />
equilibrium without uncertainty (what Mises calls the evenly rotating<br />
economy), <strong>capitalist</strong>s would still earn interest as a reward for lending, but<br />
there would be no profit or loss.<br />
Entrepreneurs, in Mises’s underst<strong>and</strong>ing of the market, make their<br />
production plans based on the current prices of factors of production <strong>and</strong><br />
the anticipated future prices of consumer goods. What Mises calls “economic<br />
calculation” is the comparison of these anticipated future receipts<br />
with present outlays, all expressed in common monetary units. Under<br />
socialism, the absence of factor markets <strong>and</strong> the consequent lack of factor<br />
prices renders economic calculation—<strong>and</strong> hence rational economic planning—impossible.<br />
Mises’s point is that a socialist economy may assign individuals<br />
to be workers, managers, technicians, inventors, <strong>and</strong> the like, but<br />
it cannot, by definition, have <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s, because there are no money<br />
profits <strong>and</strong> losses. Entrepreneurship, <strong>and</strong> not labor, management or technological<br />
expertise, is the crucial element of the market economy. As Mises<br />
puts it, directors of socialist enterprises may be allowed to play market—to<br />
make capital investment decisions as if they were allocating scarce capital<br />
across activities in an economizing way. But <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s cannot be asked<br />
to “play speculation <strong>and</strong> investment” (Mises, 1949, p. 705). Without<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, a complex, dynamic economy cannot allocate resources<br />
to their highest value use.<br />
Entrepreneurship as Opportunity Identification<br />
While Schumpeter, Kirzner, Cantillon, Knight, <strong>and</strong> Mises are frequently<br />
cited in the contemporary <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship literature in economics <strong>and</strong><br />
management (Schultz, by contrast, is rarely cited), much of this literature<br />
takes, implicitly, an occupational or structural approach to <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship.<br />
Any relationship to the classic functional contributions is inspirational,<br />
not substantive.
100 <br />
e most important exception is the literature in management <strong>and</strong> organization<br />
theory on opportunity discovery or opportunity identification,<br />
or what Shane (2003) calls the “individual–opportunity nexus.” Opportunity<br />
identification involves not only technical skills like financial analysis<br />
<strong>and</strong> market research, but also less tangible forms of creativity, team building,<br />
problem solving, <strong>and</strong> leadership (Long <strong>and</strong> McMullan, 1984; Hills,<br />
Lumpkin, <strong>and</strong> Singh, 1997; Hindle, 2004). While value can, of course,<br />
be created not only by starting new activities, but also by improving the<br />
operation of existing activities, research in opportunity identification tends<br />
to emphasize new activities. ese could include creating a new firm or<br />
starting a new business arrangement, introducing a new product or service,<br />
or developing a new method of production. As summarized by Shane<br />
(2003, pp. 4–5):<br />
Entrepreneurship is an activity that involves the discovery, evaluation,<br />
<strong>and</strong> exploitation of opportunities to introduce new goods<br />
<strong>and</strong> services, ways of organizing, markets, process, <strong>and</strong> raw materials<br />
through organizing efforts that previously had not existed<br />
(Venkataraman, 1997; Shane <strong>and</strong> Venkataraman, 2000). Given<br />
this definition, the academic field of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship incorporates,<br />
in its domain, explanations for why, when, <strong>and</strong> how <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
opportunities exist; the sources of those opportunities <strong>and</strong><br />
the forms that they take; the processes of opportunity discovery<br />
<strong>and</strong> evaluation; the acquisition of resources for the exploitation<br />
of these opportunities; the act of opportunity exploitation; why,<br />
when, <strong>and</strong> how some individuals <strong>and</strong> not others discover, evaluate,<br />
gather resources for, <strong>and</strong> exploit opportunities; the strategies used<br />
to pursue opportunities; <strong>and</strong> the organizing efforts to exploit them<br />
(Shane <strong>and</strong> Venkataraman, 2000).<br />
is conception is admirably broad, incorporating not only opportunity<br />
discovery, but also the processes by which opportunities are pursued<br />
<strong>and</strong> exploited. What unifies these varied aspects of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
function is the concept of the opportunity. e discovery <strong>and</strong> (potential)<br />
exploitation of opportunities is proposed as the unit of analysis for <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship<br />
research. But what exactly are opportunities? How are they<br />
best characterized? How much explicit characterization is necessary for<br />
applied research in <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial organization <strong>and</strong> strategy?
101<br />
Opportunities: Objective or Subjective?<br />
Shane <strong>and</strong> Venkataraman (2000, p. 220) define <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial opportunities<br />
as “those situations in which new goods, services, raw materials,<br />
<strong>and</strong> organizing methods can be introduced <strong>and</strong> sold at greater than<br />
their cost of production.” ese opportunities are treated as objective phenomena,<br />
though their existence is not known by all agents. Shane <strong>and</strong><br />
Venkataraman also distinguish <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial opportunities from profit<br />
opportunities more generally. While the latter reflect opportunities to create<br />
value by enhancing the efficiency of producing existing goods, services,<br />
<strong>and</strong> processes, the former includes value creation through “the very perception<br />
of the means-ends framework” itself (Kirzner, 1973, p. 33). Shane<br />
<strong>and</strong> Venkataraman seem to have in mind the distinction between activities<br />
that can be modeled as solutions to well-specified optimization problems—what<br />
Kirzner (1973) calls “Robbinsian maximizing”—<strong>and</strong> those<br />
for which no existing model, or decision rule, is available.<br />
However, Shane <strong>and</strong> Venkataraman appear to misunderst<strong>and</strong> Kirzner<br />
(<strong>and</strong> the Austrians more generally) on this point. In a world of Knightian<br />
uncertainty, all profit opportunities involve decisions for which no wellspecified<br />
maximization problem is available. Kirzner does not mean that<br />
some economic decisions really are the result of Robbinsian maximizing,<br />
while others reflect discovery. Instead, Kirzner is simply contrasting two<br />
methodological constructions for the analysis of human action.<br />
More generally, the opportunity identification literature seeks to build<br />
a positive research program by operationalizing the concept of alertness.<br />
How is alertness manifested in action? How do we recognize it empirically?<br />
Can we distinguish discovery from systematic search? As summarized by<br />
Gaglio <strong>and</strong> Katz (2001, p. 96):<br />
Almost all of the initial empirical investigations of alertness have<br />
focused on the means by which an individual might literally notice<br />
without search. For example, Kaish <strong>and</strong> Gilad (1991) interpret this<br />
as having an aptitude to position oneself in the flow of information<br />
so that the probability of encountering opportunities without a deliberate<br />
search for a specific opportunity is maximized. erefore,<br />
in their operational measures of alertness, they asked founders to<br />
recall: (a) the amount of time <strong>and</strong> effort exerted in generating<br />
an information flow; (b) the selection of information sources for
102 <br />
generating an information flow; <strong>and</strong> (c) the cues inherent in information<br />
that signal the presence of an opportunity. From this data<br />
the authors deduced: (d) the quantity of information in the flow<br />
<strong>and</strong> (e) the breadth <strong>and</strong> diversity of information in the flow.<br />
eir results conform to expectations in some ways but also<br />
reveal some unexpected patterns. Compared to the sample of corporate<br />
executives, the sample of new venture founders do appear<br />
to spend more time generating an information flow <strong>and</strong> do seem<br />
more likely to use unconventional sources of information. Interestingly,<br />
the founders do seem more attentive to risk cues rather<br />
than to market potential cues. However, the data also reveal that<br />
only inexperienced or unsuccessful founders engage in such intense<br />
information collection efforts. Successful founders actually behave<br />
more like the sample of corporate executives. Cooper et al. (1995)<br />
found a similar pattern of results in their survey of 1100 firms<br />
although Busenitz (1996), in an altered replication of Kaish <strong>and</strong><br />
Gilad’s survey, did not. Indeed Busenitz found few significant differences<br />
between corporate managers <strong>and</strong> new venture founders. In<br />
addition, validity checks of the survey measures yielded low reliability<br />
scores, which led the author to conclude that future research in<br />
alertness required improved theoretical <strong>and</strong> operational precision.<br />
is positive research program misses, however, the point of Kirzner’s<br />
metaphor of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial alertness: namely, that it is only a metaphor.<br />
Kirzner’s aim is not to characterize <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship per se, but to explain<br />
the tendency for markets to clear. In the Kirznerian system, opportunities<br />
are (exogenous) arbitrage opportunities <strong>and</strong> nothing more. Entrepreneurship<br />
itself serves a purely instrumental function; it is the means by which<br />
Kirzner explains market clearing. Of course, arbitrage opportunities cannot<br />
exist in a perfectly competitive general-equilibrium model, so Kirzner’s<br />
framework assumes the presence of competitive imperfections, to use the<br />
language of strategic factor markets (Barney, 1986; Alvarez <strong>and</strong> Barney,<br />
2004). Beyond specifying general disequilibrium conditions, however,<br />
Kirzner offers no theory of how opportunities come to be identified, who<br />
identifies them, <strong>and</strong> so on; identification itself is a black box. e claim<br />
is simply that outside the Arrow–Debreu world, in which all knowledge is<br />
effectively parameterized, opportunities for disequilibrium profit exist <strong>and</strong><br />
tend to be discovered <strong>and</strong> exploited. In short, what Kirzner calls “<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
discovery” is simply that which causes markets to equilibrate. 5<br />
5 e foregoing description applies primarily to what Kirzner calls the “pure entre-
103<br />
Contemporary <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship scholars, considering whether opportunities<br />
are objective or subjective (McMullen <strong>and</strong> Shepherd, 2006; Companys<br />
<strong>and</strong> McMullen, 2007), note that Kirzner tends to treat them as<br />
objective. Again, this is true, but misses the point. Kirzner is not making<br />
an ontological claim about the nature of profit opportunities per se—not<br />
claiming, in other words, that opportunities are, in some fundamental<br />
sense, objective—but merely using the concept of objective, exogenously<br />
given, but not yet discovered opportunities as a device for explaining the<br />
tendency of markets to clear. 6<br />
e Knightian perspective also treats <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship as an instrumental<br />
construct, used here to decompose business income into two constituent<br />
elements—interest <strong>and</strong> profit. Interest is a reward for forgoing<br />
present consumption, is determined by the relative time preferences of<br />
borrowers <strong>and</strong> lenders, <strong>and</strong> would exist even in a world of certainty. Profit,<br />
by contrast, is a reward for anticipating the uncertain future more accurately<br />
than others (e.g., purchasing factors of production at market prices<br />
below the eventual selling price of the product), <strong>and</strong> exists only in a world<br />
of true uncertainty. In such a world, given that production takes time,<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s will earn either profits or losses based on the differences<br />
between factor prices paid <strong>and</strong> product prices received.<br />
For Knight, in other words, opportunities do not exist, just waiting to<br />
be discovered (<strong>and</strong> hence, by definition, exploited). Rather, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s<br />
invest resources based on their expectations of future consumer dem<strong>and</strong>s<br />
<strong>and</strong> market conditions, investments that may or may not yield positive<br />
returns. Here the focus is not on opportunities, but on investment <strong>and</strong><br />
uncertainty. Expectations about the future are inherently subjective <strong>and</strong>,<br />
under conditions of uncertainty rather than risk, constitute judgments<br />
that are not themselves modelable. Put differently, subjectivism implies<br />
preneur” (see footnote 2 above). As he explains, flesh <strong>and</strong> blood <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s do not<br />
correspond exactly to this ideal type (they can simultaneously be laborers, <strong>capitalist</strong>s,<br />
consumers, etc.)—<strong>and</strong> they do more than simply discover costless profit opportunities.<br />
However, in Kirzner’s framework, the attributes of real-world <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s defy systematic<br />
categorization.<br />
6 Incidentally, the occupational choice literature cited above treats opportunities, implicitly<br />
or explicitly, as objective. Agents are assumed to compare the expected benefits<br />
of employment <strong>and</strong> self-employment, meaning that the set of possible <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
outcomes must be fixed, <strong>and</strong> the probability weights assigned to individual outcomes<br />
known in advance.
104 <br />
that opportunities do not exist in an objective sense. Hence, a research<br />
program based on formalizing <strong>and</strong> studying empirically the cognitive or<br />
psychological processes leading individuals to discover opportunities captures<br />
only a limited aspect of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial process. Opportunities<br />
for <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial gain are, thus, inherently subjective—they do not exist<br />
until profits are realized. Entrepreneurship research may be able to realize<br />
higher marginal returns by focusing on <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial action, rather than<br />
its presumed antecedents. 7<br />
Alvarez <strong>and</strong> Barney (2007) argue that <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial objectives, characteristics,<br />
<strong>and</strong> decision making differ systematically, depending on whether<br />
opportunities are modeled as discovered or created. In the “discovery<br />
approach,” for example, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial actions are responses to exogenous<br />
shocks, while in the “creation approach,” such actions are endogenous.<br />
Discovery <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s focus on predicting systematic risks, formulating<br />
complete <strong>and</strong> stable strategies, <strong>and</strong> procuring capital from external sources.<br />
Creation <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s, by contrast, appreciate iterative, inductive, incremental<br />
decision making, are comfortable with emergent <strong>and</strong> flexible<br />
strategies, <strong>and</strong> tend to rely on internal finance. 8<br />
e approach proposed here is close to Alvarez <strong>and</strong> Barney’s creation<br />
approach, but differs in that it places greater emphasis on the ex post processes<br />
of resource assembly <strong>and</strong> personnel management rather than the ex<br />
ante processes of cognition, expectations formation, <strong>and</strong> business planning.<br />
Moreover, Alvarez <strong>and</strong> Barney write as if “discovery settings” <strong>and</strong><br />
“creation settings” are actual business environments within which <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s<br />
operate. Some <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s really do discover exogenously created<br />
profit opportunities, while others have to work creatively to establish<br />
them. As I read Knight <strong>and</strong> Kirzner, by contrast, both the discovery<br />
<strong>and</strong> creation perspectives are purely metaphorical concepts (useful for the<br />
economist or management theorist), not frameworks for <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
7 Here I follow Gul <strong>and</strong> Pesendorfer’s (2005, p. 1) more general critique of neuroeconomìcs,<br />
namely that cognitive psychology <strong>and</strong> economics “address different questions,<br />
utilize different abstractions, <strong>and</strong> address different types of empirical evidence,” meaning<br />
that the two disciplines are in essentially different, though potentially complementary, domains.<br />
In other words, underst<strong>and</strong>ing the cognitive processes underlying <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
behavior may be interesting <strong>and</strong> important, but not necessary for the economic analysis of<br />
the behavior itself.<br />
8 Miller (2007) distinguishes further between opportunity recognition, opportunity<br />
discovery, <strong>and</strong> opportunity creation.
105<br />
decision making itself. is suggests that opportunities are best characterized<br />
neither as discovered nor created, but imagined. e creation<br />
metaphor implies that profit opportunities, once the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> has conceived<br />
or established them, come into being objectively, like a work of art.<br />
Creation implies that something is created. ere is no uncertainty about<br />
its existence or characteristics (though, of course, its market value may not<br />
be known until later). By contrast, the concept of opportunity imagination<br />
emphasizes that gains (<strong>and</strong> losses) do not come into being objectively until<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial action is complete (i.e., until final goods <strong>and</strong> services have<br />
been produced <strong>and</strong> sold). 9<br />
Moreover, explaining <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial loss is awkward using both discovery<br />
<strong>and</strong> creation language. In Kirzner’s formulation, for example, the<br />
worst that can happen to an <strong>entrepreneur</strong> is the failure to discover an existing<br />
profit opportunity. Entrepreneurs either earn profits or break even,<br />
but it is unclear how they suffer losses. Kirzner (1997) claims that <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s<br />
can earn losses when they misread market conditions. “Entrepreneurial<br />
boldness <strong>and</strong> imagination can lead to pure <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial losses<br />
as well as to pure profit. Mistaken actions by <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s mean that<br />
they have misread the market, possibly pushing price <strong>and</strong> output constellations<br />
in directions not equilibrative” Kirzner (1997, p. 72). But even<br />
this formulation makes it clear that it is mistaken actions—not mistaken<br />
discoveries—that lead to loss. Misreading market conditions leads to losses<br />
only if the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> has invested resources in a project based on this<br />
misreading. It is the failure to anticipate future market conditions correctly<br />
that causes the loss. It seems obscure to describe this as erroneous<br />
discovery, rather than unsuccessful uncertainty bearing. 10<br />
Likewise, realized <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial losses do not fit naturally within a<br />
9 e concept of “opportunity imagination” calls to mind Boulding’s (1956, p. 15)<br />
notion of “image,” defined as “the sum of what we think we know <strong>and</strong> what makes<br />
us behave the way we do.” Human action, in Boulding’s framework, is a response to<br />
the actor’s (subjective) image of reality. is does not mean that images are completely<br />
detached from reality, but that reality is altered, or interpreted, by the actor’s subjective<br />
beliefs. Penrose’s (1959) concept, of the firm’s subjective opportunity set also reflects<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial imagination in this sense (Kor, Mahoney, <strong>and</strong> Michael, 2007).<br />
10 In his defense, Kirzner’s (1997) remarks appear in the context of defending the<br />
equilibrating tendency of the market, against the Walrasian picture of instantaneous market<br />
adjustment. Still, the defense could perhaps be made equally well without reference to the<br />
discovery metaphor.
106 <br />
creation framework. Alvarez <strong>and</strong> Barney (2007) emphasize that “creation<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s” do take into account potential losses, the “acceptable losses”<br />
described by Sarasvathy (2001). “[A]n <strong>entrepreneur</strong> engages in <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
actions when the total losses that can be created by such activities<br />
are not too large” (Alvarez <strong>and</strong> Barney, 2007, p. 19). However, when<br />
those losses are realized, it seems more straightforward to think in terms of<br />
mistaken beliefs about the future—expected prices <strong>and</strong> sales revenues that<br />
did not, in fact, materialize—than the “disappearance” of an opportunity<br />
that was previously created. Entrepreneurs do not, in other words, create<br />
the future, they imagine it, <strong>and</strong> their imagination can be wrong as often as<br />
it is right. 11<br />
Opportunities as a black box<br />
Confusion over the nature of opportunities is increasingly recognized. As<br />
noted by McMullen, Plummer, <strong>and</strong> Acs (2007, p. 273),<br />
a good portion of the research to date has focused on the discovery,<br />
exploitation, <strong>and</strong> consequences thereof without much attention to<br />
the nature <strong>and</strong> source of opportunity itself. Although some researchers<br />
argue that the subjective or socially constructed nature<br />
of opportunity makes it impossible to separate opportunity from<br />
the individual, others contend that opportunity is as an objective<br />
construct visible to or created by the knowledgeable or attuned<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>. Either way, a set of weakly held assumptions about<br />
the nature <strong>and</strong> sources of opportunity appear to dominate much of<br />
the discussion in the literature.<br />
Do we need a precise definition of opportunities to move forward? Can<br />
one do <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship research without specifying what, exactly, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
opportunities are? Can we treat opportunities as a black box,<br />
much as we treat other concepts in management, such as culture, leadership,<br />
routines, capabilities, <strong>and</strong> the like (Abell, Felin, <strong>and</strong> Foss, 2008)?<br />
11 To go from judgment to an explanation for market efficiency requires assumptions<br />
about the tendency of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial judgments to be correct. Mises’s (1951) explanation<br />
is based on a kind of natural selection, namely that market competition rewards those<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s whose judgments tend to be better than the judgments of their fellow<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s. Of course, one needn’t go as far as Friedman (1953) in assuming that the<br />
result is “optimal” behavior, in the neoclassical economist’s sense of optimality, to defend<br />
the effectiveness of this selection process.
107<br />
One approach is to focus not on what opportunities are, but what<br />
opportunities do. Opportunities, in this sense, are treated as a latent construct<br />
that is manifested in <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial action—investment, creating<br />
new organizations, bringing products to market, <strong>and</strong> so on. A direct analogy<br />
can be drawn to the economist’s notion of preferences. Economic<br />
theory (with the exception of behavioral economics, discussed later) takes<br />
agents’ preferences as a given <strong>and</strong> derives implications for choice. e<br />
economist does not care what preferences “are,” ontologically, but simply<br />
postulates their existence <strong>and</strong> draws inferences about their characteristics as<br />
needed to explain particular kinds of economic behavior. Empirically, this<br />
approach can be operationalized by treating <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship as a latent<br />
variable in a structural-equations framework (Xue <strong>and</strong> Klein, 2010).<br />
By treating opportunities as a latent construct, this approach sidesteps<br />
the problem of defining opportunities as objective or subjective, real or<br />
imagined, <strong>and</strong> so on. e formation of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial beliefs is treated<br />
as a potentially interesting psychological problem, but not part of the<br />
economic analysis of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship. It also avoids thorny questions<br />
about whether alertness or judgment is simply luck (Demsetz, 1983), a<br />
kind of intuition (Dane <strong>and</strong> Pratt, 2007), or something else entirely.<br />
The unit of analysis<br />
As explained earlier, the opportunity-creation approach proposed by Alvarez<br />
<strong>and</strong> Barney (2007) differs in important ways from the opportunitydiscovery<br />
approach. e creation approach treats opportunities as the<br />
result of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial action. Opportunities do not exist objectively,<br />
ex ante, but are created, ex nihilo, as <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s act based on their<br />
subjective beliefs. “Creation opportunities are social constructions that<br />
do not exist independent of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>’s perceptions” (Alvarez <strong>and</strong><br />
Barney, 2007, p. 15). In this sense, the creation approach sounds like the<br />
imagination approach described here. Still, like the discovery approach,<br />
the creation approach makes the opportunity the unit of analysis. How<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s create opportunities, <strong>and</strong> how they subsequently seek to<br />
exploit those opportunities, is the focus of the research program.<br />
At one level, the distinction between opportunity creation <strong>and</strong> opportunity<br />
imagination seems semantic. Both hold that <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s act<br />
based on their beliefs about future gains <strong>and</strong> losses, rather than reacting to
108 <br />
objective, exogenously given opportunities for profit. ere are some ontological<br />
<strong>and</strong> epistemological differences, however. e creation approach<br />
is grounded in a social constructivist view of action (Alvarez <strong>and</strong> Barney,<br />
2007). It holds that the market itself is a social construction, <strong>and</strong> that<br />
realized gains <strong>and</strong> losses are, in part, subjective. e imagination approach<br />
described here is, in this sense, less subjectivist than the creation approach.<br />
It is tied closely to Mises’s (1912; 1920) concept of monetary calculation,<br />
in which realized gains <strong>and</strong> losses are objective <strong>and</strong> quantifiable, <strong>and</strong> used<br />
to filter (or select) the quality of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial expectations <strong>and</strong> beliefs.<br />
It is compatible with a range of ontological positions, from evolutionary<br />
realism to critical realism (Lawson, 1997; Mäki, 1996) to Misesian praxeology<br />
(Mises, 1949).<br />
An alternative way to frame a subjectivist approach to <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship,<br />
emphasizing uncertainty <strong>and</strong> the passage of time, is to drop the<br />
concept of “opportunity” altogether. If opportunities are inherently subjective<br />
<strong>and</strong> we treat them as a black box, then the unit of analysis should<br />
not be opportunities, but rather some action—in Knightian terms, the assembly<br />
of resources in the present in anticipation of (uncertain) receipts in<br />
the future. Again, the analogy with preferences in microeconomic theory<br />
is clear: the unit of analysis in consumer theory is not preferences, but<br />
consumption, while in neoclassical production theory, the unit of analysis<br />
is not the production function, but some decision variable.<br />
One could also view opportunities <strong>and</strong> actions as distinct—but complementary—aspects<br />
of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial process. To use Alvarez <strong>and</strong><br />
Barney’s (2007) terminology, the discovery perspective treats actions as<br />
responses to opportunities, while the creation perspective treats opportunities<br />
as the result of action. By contrast, the perspective outlined here<br />
treats opportunities as a superfluous concept, once action is taken into<br />
account. Opportunities exist only as manifested in action, <strong>and</strong> are neither<br />
its cause nor consequence of action. Hence, we can dispense with the very<br />
notion of opportunities itself <strong>and</strong> focus on the actions that <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s<br />
take <strong>and</strong> the results of those actions.<br />
One way to capture the Knightian concept of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial action is<br />
Casson <strong>and</strong> Wadeson’s (2007) notion of “projects.” A project is a stock of<br />
resources committed to particular activities for a specified period of time.<br />
Project benefits are uncertain, <strong>and</strong> are realized only after projects are completed.<br />
Casson <strong>and</strong> Wadeson (2007) model the set of potential projects as
109<br />
a given, defining opportunities as potential projects that have not yet been<br />
chosen. As in the discovery-process perspective, the set of opportunities<br />
is fixed. However, as Casson <strong>and</strong> Wadeson point out, the assumption of<br />
fixed “project possibility sets” is a modeling convenience, made necessary<br />
by their particular theory of project selection. More generally, the use of<br />
projects as the unit of analysis is consistent with either the discovery or creation<br />
perspective. Focusing on projects, rather than opportunities, implies<br />
an emphasis on the actions that generate profits <strong>and</strong> losses. It suggests that<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship research should focus on the execution of business plans.<br />
In this sense, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship is closely linked to finance—not simply<br />
“<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial finance” that studies venture funding <strong>and</strong> firm formation,<br />
but the more general problem of project finance under (true) uncertainty.<br />
Not only venture capital, but also public equity <strong>and</strong> debt, are <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
instruments in this perspective. Capital budgeting is also a form of<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial decision making. Of course contemporary finance theory<br />
focuses primarily on equilibrium models of resource allocation under conditions<br />
of risk, not Knightian uncertainty, so <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship theory cannot<br />
be simply a reframing of modern finance theory. Instead, a financiers<br />
as <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s approach treats investors not as passive suppliers of capital<br />
to decision-making firms, but as the locus of economic decision making<br />
itself, as economic agents who experiment with resource combinations<br />
(chapter 3 above), develop <strong>and</strong> exploit network ties (Meyer, 2000), manage<br />
<strong>and</strong> govern subordinates (Kaplan <strong>and</strong> Strömberg, 2003), <strong>and</strong> the like.<br />
Entrepreneurial Action, Heterogeneous Capital, <strong>and</strong> Economic<br />
Organization<br />
e close relationship between the Knightian concept of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship<br />
as action under uncertainty <strong>and</strong> the ownership <strong>and</strong> control of resources<br />
suggests a bridge between <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship <strong>and</strong> the mundane activities<br />
of establishing <strong>and</strong> maintaining a business enterprise—what Witt (2003)<br />
calls the “organizational grind.” Chapter 4 above offers an <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
theory of the economic organization that combines the Knightian concept<br />
of judgment <strong>and</strong> the Austrian approach to capital heterogeneity. In<br />
Knight’s formulation, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship represents judgment that cannot<br />
be assessed in terms of its marginal product <strong>and</strong> which cannot, accordingly,<br />
be paid a wage (Knight, 1921). In other words, there is no market for the
110 <br />
judgment that <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s rely on <strong>and</strong>, therefore, exercising judgment<br />
requires the person with judgment to start a firm. Of course, judgmental<br />
decision-makers can hire consultants, forecasters, technical experts, <strong>and</strong> so<br />
on. However, in doing so they are exercising their own <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
judgment. 12 us, judgment implies asset ownership, for judgmental decision<br />
making is ultimately decision making about the employment of<br />
resources. e <strong>entrepreneur</strong>’s role, then, is to arrange or organize the<br />
capital goods he/she owns. As Lachmann (1956, p. 16) puts it, “We are<br />
living in a world of unexpected change; hence capital combinations ... will<br />
be ever changing, will be dissolved <strong>and</strong> reformed. In this activity, we find<br />
the real function of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>.” 13<br />
12 In Foss, Foss, <strong>and</strong> Klein’s (2007) terminology, the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>-owner exercises “original”<br />
judgment, while hired employees, to whom the owner delegates particular decision<br />
rights, exercise “derived” judgment as agents of the owner. is implies that top corporate<br />
managers, whose day-to-day decisions drive the organization of corporate resources, are<br />
acting only as “proxy-<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s,” except to the extent that they themselves are part<br />
owners through equity holdings.<br />
13 Lachmann (1956) does not require the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> to own the assets he recombines;<br />
see chapter 4 above for a more detailed argument that ownership, as residual rights of<br />
control, is a necessary part of this <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial function. Consider also Marchal’s (1951,<br />
pp. 550–51) explanation of the economic return to the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial function:<br />
[E]ntrepreneurs obtain remuneration for their activity in a very different<br />
manner than do laborers or lenders of capital. e latter provide factors<br />
of production which they sell to the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> at prices which they<br />
naturally try to make as high as possible. e <strong>entrepreneur</strong> proceeds quite<br />
otherwise; instead of selling something to the enterprise, he identifies<br />
himself with the enterprise. Some people doubtless will say that he<br />
provides the function of enterprise <strong>and</strong> receives as remuneration a<br />
sum which varies according to the results. But this is a tortured way<br />
of presenting the thing, inspired by an unhealthy desire to establish<br />
arbitrarily asymmetry with the other factors. In reality, the <strong>entrepreneur</strong><br />
<strong>and</strong> the firm are one <strong>and</strong> the same. His function is to negotiate, or to<br />
pay people for negotiating under his responsibility <strong>and</strong> in the name of<br />
the firm, with two groups: on the one h<strong>and</strong>, with those who provide the<br />
factors of production, in which case his problem is to pay the lowest prices<br />
possible; on the other h<strong>and</strong>, with the buyers of the finished products,<br />
from which it is desirable to obtain as large a total revenue as possible.<br />
To say all this in a few words, the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>, although undeniably<br />
providing a factor of production, perhaps the most important one in a<br />
<strong>capitalist</strong> system, is not himself to be defined in those terms.<br />
Marchal expresses, in strong terms, the view described in chapter 4 that <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship<br />
is embodied in asset ownership (i.e., in the creation <strong>and</strong> operation of the firm). e
111<br />
Chapter 4 above argues that Austrian capital theory provides a unique<br />
foundation for an <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial theory of economic organization. Neoclassical<br />
production theory, with its notion of capital as a permanent, homogeneous<br />
fund of value, rather than a discrete stock of heterogeneous<br />
capital goods, is of little help here. 14 Transaction cost, resource-based,<br />
<strong>and</strong> property-rights approaches to the firm do incorporate notions of heterogeneous<br />
assets, but they tend to invoke the needed specificities in an ad<br />
hoc fashion to rationalize particular trading problems—for transaction cost<br />
economics, asset specificity; for capabilities theories, tacit knowledge; <strong>and</strong><br />
so on. e Austrian approach—starting with Menger’s (1871) concepts<br />
of higher- <strong>and</strong> lower-order goods <strong>and</strong> extending through Böhm-Bawerk’s<br />
(1889) notion of roundaboutness, Lachmann’s (1956) theory of multiple<br />
specificities, <strong>and</strong> Kirzner’s (1966) formulation of capital structure in<br />
terms of subjective <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial plans—offers a solid foundation for a<br />
judgment-based theory of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial action.<br />
As we saw in chapter 4, Barzel’s (1997) idea that capital goods are distinguished<br />
by their attributes is one way to operationalize the Austrian notion<br />
of heterogeneity. Attributes are characteristics, functions, or possible<br />
uses of assets, as perceived by an <strong>entrepreneur</strong>. Assets are heterogeneous to<br />
the extent that they have different, <strong>and</strong> different levels of, valued attributes.<br />
Attributes may also vary over time, even for a particular asset. Given<br />
Knightian uncertainty, attributes do not exist objectively, but subjectively,<br />
in the minds of profit-seeking <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s who put these assets to use<br />
in various lines of production. Entrepreneurship thus not only involves<br />
deploying superior combinations of capital assets with given attributes, but<br />
also a means of experimenting with capital assets in an attempt to create or<br />
discover new valued attributes. In short, firms exist not only to economize<br />
on transaction costs, but also as a means for the exercise of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
judgment, <strong>and</strong> as a low-cost mechanism for <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s to experiment<br />
with various combinations of heterogeneous capital goods. e boundary<br />
changes discussed in chapter 3 can be understood as the result of processes<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong> is not merely an idea man, but rather an owner, who exercises judgment<br />
over the capital assets he owns <strong>and</strong> manages. is contrasts with Kirzner’s analytical device<br />
of the “pure <strong>entrepreneur</strong>” who owns no capital. (I thank John Matthews for the reference<br />
to Marchal.)<br />
14 Ironically, the notion of capital as a homogeneous fund owes its popularity to Knight<br />
(1936).
112 <br />
of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial experimentation. And internal organization is a means<br />
of delegating particular decision rights to subordinates who exercise derived<br />
judgment (Foss, Foss, <strong>and</strong> Klein, 2007).<br />
Witt (1998) offers another approach to combining an Austrian concept<br />
of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship with the theory of the firm. Entrepreneurs require<br />
complementary factors of production, he argues, which are coordinated<br />
within the firm. For the firm to be successful the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> must establish<br />
a tacit, shared framework of goals—what Casson (2000) calls a<br />
“mental model” of reality—which governs the relationships among members<br />
of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>’s team. As Langlois (1998) points out, it is often<br />
easier (less costly) for individuals to commit to a specific individual—the<br />
leader—rather than an abstract set of complex rules governing the firm’s<br />
operations. e appropriate exercise of charismatic authority, then, facilitates<br />
coordination within organizations (Witt, 2003). is approach<br />
combines insights from economics, psychology, <strong>and</strong> sociology, <strong>and</strong> leans<br />
heavily on Max Weber. Leaders coordinate through effective communication,<br />
not only of explicit information, but also of mental models as<br />
described above. e successful <strong>entrepreneur</strong> excels at communicating<br />
such models. 15<br />
Here, as in Coase (1937), the employment relationship is central to<br />
the theory of the firm. e <strong>entrepreneur</strong>’s primary task is to coordinate<br />
the human resources that make up the firm. e analysis in chapter 4, by<br />
contrast, focuses on alienable assets, as in Knight (1921). It defines the firm<br />
as the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> plus the alienable resources the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> owns <strong>and</strong>,<br />
thus, controls. Each approach has strengths <strong>and</strong> weaknesses. e cognitive<br />
approach explains the dynamics among team members, but not necessarily<br />
their contractual relationships. Must charismatic leaders necessarily own<br />
physical capital, or can they be employees or independent contractors?<br />
Formulating a business plan, communicating a corporate culture, <strong>and</strong> the<br />
like are clearly important dimensions of business leadership. But are they<br />
attributes of the successful manager or the successful <strong>entrepreneur</strong>? Even<br />
if top-level managerial skill were the same as <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, it is unclear<br />
why charismatic leadership should be regarded as more <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
than other, comparatively mundane managerial tasks, such as structuring<br />
15 Earl’s (2003) “connectionist approach” to <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship also focuses on coordination,<br />
but here the emphasis is on coordination among market participants, not within<br />
organizations. See also Koppl <strong>and</strong> Langlois (2001) <strong>and</strong> Langlois (2002).
113<br />
incentives, limiting opportunism, administering rewards, <strong>and</strong> so on. On<br />
the other h<strong>and</strong>, the judgment approach does not generalize easily from the<br />
one-person firm to the multi-person firm.<br />
Applications of Entrepreneurial Action<br />
Shifting the focus of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship research from opportunity identification<br />
to <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial action suggests several new issues <strong>and</strong> directions<br />
for <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship research.<br />
Opportunities <strong>and</strong> Organizational Form<br />
Distinguishing between opportunity discovery <strong>and</strong> <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial action<br />
reminds us that the two do not always go h<strong>and</strong> in h<strong>and</strong>. Efforts to encourage<br />
the former do not necessarily encourage the latter. Generally, efficiency<br />
requires that <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s (<strong>and</strong> what Foss, Foss, <strong>and</strong> Klein, 2007 call<br />
“proxy-<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s”) bear the full wealth effects of their actions. For this<br />
reason, efforts to promote experimentation, creativity, etc., within the firm<br />
can encourage moral hazard unless rewards <strong>and</strong> punishments are symmetric.<br />
Outside the firm, strong intellectual property protection, incentives for<br />
discovery (such as SBIR awards), <strong>and</strong> the like may encourage overspending<br />
on discovery. e potential waste of resources on “patent races” is a wellknown<br />
example (Barzel, 1968; Loury, 1979; Dasgupta <strong>and</strong> Stiglitz, 1980;<br />
Judd, Schmedders, <strong>and</strong> Yeltekin, 2003).<br />
By contrast, if the essence of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship is the assembly of resources<br />
under uncertainty, then the locus of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship is not the<br />
generation of creative ideas, but the funding of projects. Financiers—<br />
venture <strong>capitalist</strong>s, angel investors, banks, family members, even corporate<br />
shareholders—are, in this sense, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s. Resource owners possess<br />
fundamental judgment rights that, by the nature of ownership, cannot be<br />
delegated, no matter how many proximate decision rights are delegated<br />
to subordinates (Foss, Foss, <strong>and</strong> Klein, 2007). In this perspective, even<br />
corporate shareholders are treated not as passive suppliers of capital (as<br />
they are treated both in neoclassical production theory <strong>and</strong> contemporary<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship theory), but as critical decision-makers. 16<br />
16 See the discussion in chapter 2 above on “firms as investments” <strong>and</strong> “financiers as<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s.”
114 <br />
Some applications, such as the staging of venture finance (Gompers,<br />
1995), are obvious. Another application is the inherent uncertainty of<br />
the gains from corporate takeovers. As discussed in chapter 2 above, the<br />
“raider’s” return to a successful takeover is thus a form of pure <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
profit. More generally, note that in this perspective, finance is<br />
treated not as an input into the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial process, but as the very<br />
essence of that process. Entrepreneurship is, in other words, manifested in<br />
investment. Of course, the terms “finance” <strong>and</strong> “investment” are used here<br />
in a broad sense, referring to the provision not only of financial capital, but<br />
also human capital, <strong>and</strong> tangible <strong>and</strong> intangible resources—anything that<br />
can be considered an input or factor of production. Entrepreneurship is<br />
conceived as the act of putting resources at risk, with profit as the reward for<br />
anticipating future market conditions correctly, or at least more correctly<br />
than other <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s.<br />
Entrepreneurial Teams<br />
Focusing on <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial action also responds to recent calls to link the<br />
theory of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship more closely to the theory of group behavior<br />
(Stewart, 1989; Mosakowski, 1998; Cook <strong>and</strong> Plunkett, 2006). Some efforts<br />
to develop a theory of team <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship focus on shared mental<br />
models, team cognition, <strong>and</strong> other aspects of the process of identifying<br />
opportunities. Penrose’s (1959) concept of the firm’s “subjective opportunity”<br />
set is an obvious link to judgment-based theories of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship<br />
(Kor, et al., 2007). 17 Entrepreneurs can also form networks to share expectations<br />
of the potential returns to projects (Greve <strong>and</strong> Salaff, 2003; Parker,<br />
2008).<br />
On the other h<strong>and</strong>, even if one views the perception of a (subjectively<br />
identified) opportunity as an inherently individual act, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
action can be a team or group activity. Venture capital, later-stage private<br />
equity, <strong>and</strong> bank loans are often syndicated. Publicly traded equity is<br />
diffusely held. Professional services firms <strong>and</strong> closed-membership cooperatives<br />
represent jointly owned pools of risk capital. Moreover, the firm’s<br />
top management team—to whom key decision rights are delegated—can<br />
17 Spender (2006, p. 2) argues that “Penrose’s model of managerial learning [is] an<br />
accessible instance of the epistemological approach proposed by Austrian economists such<br />
as Hayek, Kirzner, <strong>and</strong> Schumpeter.”
115<br />
be regarded as a bundle of heterogeneous human resources, the interactions<br />
among which are critical to the firm’s performance (Foss, et al., 2008).<br />
is approach also suggests relationships between the theory of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship<br />
<strong>and</strong> the theory of collective action (Olson, 1965; Hansmann,<br />
1996). Once an <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial opportunity has been perceived, the <strong>entrepreneur</strong><br />
may need to assemble a team of investors <strong>and</strong>/or a management<br />
team, raising problems of internal governance. Shared objectives must be<br />
formulated; different time horizons must be reconciled; free riding must be<br />
mitigated; <strong>and</strong> so on. Cook <strong>and</strong> Plunkett (2006) <strong>and</strong> Chambers (2007)<br />
discuss how these problems are addressed within closed-membership, or<br />
new-generation cooperatives. Traditionally organized, open-membership<br />
cooperatives suffer from what Cook (1995) calls vaguely defined property<br />
rights. Because their equity shares are not alienable assets that trade in<br />
secondary markets, traditional cooperatives suffer from a particular set of<br />
free-rider, horizon, portfolio, control, <strong>and</strong> influence costs problems. 18<br />
In response, a new type of cooperative began to emerge in the 1990s.<br />
ese new-generation cooperatives required up-front equity investments<br />
(in traditional cooperatives, equity is generated ex post, through retained<br />
earnings), restricted patronage to member investors, <strong>and</strong> allowed for limited<br />
transferability of investment <strong>and</strong> delivery rights. 19 One of the key<br />
challenges in developing new-generation cooperatives is the establishment<br />
of a founding investment team with shared objectives <strong>and</strong> constraints <strong>and</strong><br />
an effective governing board. According to project champions—those<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s who formulated the original vision of the organization—the<br />
biggest obstacle they faced was convincing other farmer investors, with<br />
whom they had close social ties, to invest (Chambers, 2007). In other<br />
words, the successful movement from opportunity identification to <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
action depended critically on transaction cost <strong>and</strong> collective<br />
action considerations, social capital, <strong>and</strong> reputation. Team <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship,<br />
in the Knightian sense described above, is a subset of the general<br />
theory of economic organization.<br />
18 See Cook <strong>and</strong> Iliopoulos (2000) <strong>and</strong> Cook <strong>and</strong> Chaddad (2004) for details.<br />
19 Cook, Burress, <strong>and</strong> Klein (2008) document the emergence of a cluster of newgeneration<br />
cooperatives in the tiny community of Renville County, Minnesota.
116 <br />
Summary <strong>and</strong> Conclusions<br />
e arguments presented here suggest that the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship literature<br />
may have over-emphasized the origins <strong>and</strong> characteristics of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
opportunities. Instead, opportunities can be usefully treated as<br />
a latent construct that is manifested in <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial action, namely the<br />
exercise of judgment over the arrangement of heterogeneous capital assets.<br />
e Austrian theory of capital, interpreted in the attributes framework<br />
described above, provides a useful bridge between the Knightian theory of<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship <strong>and</strong> the theory of economic organization. In short, this<br />
chapter suggests a reorientation of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship literature toward<br />
deeds, not words or dreams. In Rothbard’s (1985, p. 283) words: “Entrepreneurial<br />
ideas without money are mere parlor games until the money<br />
is obtained <strong>and</strong> committed to the projects.” Of course, the subjectivist<br />
concept of resources is inextricably tied to beliefs—vision, imagination,<br />
new mental models, if you like—but these beliefs are relevant only to the<br />
extent that they are manifest in action.<br />
One objection to this approach is to invoke recent literature in behavioral<br />
economics <strong>and</strong> neuroeconomics. is literature takes preferences,<br />
not choices, as its unit of analysis, seeking to underst<strong>and</strong> the psychological<br />
basis of preference, the consistency of preferences, <strong>and</strong> the like, rather than<br />
taking preferences as an irreducible primary. Likewise, a theory of opportunity<br />
identification could mimic the methods of behavioral economics<br />
<strong>and</strong> neuroeconomics. is is, indeed, a potentially fruitful avenue for<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship research. However, like behavioral economics, such an<br />
approach has more in common with applied psychology than economics.<br />
It may contribute to a general, interdisciplinary approach to <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship,<br />
but is not an integral part of the economic theory of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship<br />
(see Gul <strong>and</strong> Pesendorfer, 2005, for a more general argument along these<br />
lines).
CHAPTER 6<br />
Risk, Uncertainty, <strong>and</strong> Economic Organization †<br />
In a recent paper, “e Limits of Numerical Probability: Frank H. Knight<br />
<strong>and</strong> Ludwig von Mises <strong>and</strong> the Frequency Interpretation,” Hans-Hermann<br />
Hoppe (2007) explores Mises’s approach to probability <strong>and</strong> its implications<br />
for economic forecasting. Hoppe argues that Mises, like Frank<br />
Knight, subscribed to the “frequency interpretation” developed by Mises’s<br />
brother, Richard von Mises (1939), along with others such as Ronald<br />
Fisher, Jerzy Neyman, <strong>and</strong> Egon Pearson. At first, this might seem surprising,<br />
as the frequency interpretation is usually contrasted with the<br />
“subjectivist” approach to probability advanced by Finetti (1937) <strong>and</strong>,<br />
among economists, usually associated with Keynes (1921). A thoroughgoing<br />
commitment to methodological subjectivism is, of course, a hallmark<br />
of the Austrian School. However, as Hoppe points out, Mises recognized<br />
two distinct kinds of probability, one applying to natural phenomena <strong>and</strong><br />
another applying to human action. Just as Mises embraced “praxeology”<br />
in economics while endorsing the experimental method in the natural<br />
sciences, he thought a special kind of probability was relevant to economic<br />
decision making, while accepting his brother’s frequency interpretation for<br />
other kinds.<br />
† Published originally in Jörg Guido Hülsmann <strong>and</strong> Stephan Kinsella, eds., Property,<br />
Freedom, <strong>and</strong> Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von<br />
Mises Institute, 2009), pp. 325–37.<br />
117
118 <br />
is chapter extends the discussion by drawing out implications for<br />
economic organization of Mises’s approach to probability, particularly regarding<br />
the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>’s role in guiding the economic process by establishing<br />
<strong>and</strong> dissolving firms, directing their operations, <strong>and</strong> organizing<br />
them to create <strong>and</strong> capture value. After a brief review of Hoppe’s interpretation<br />
of Knight <strong>and</strong> Mises, I summarize recent literature on the<br />
Knight–Mises approach to <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship <strong>and</strong> the firm, closing with<br />
some suggestions for future research.<br />
Knight, Mises, <strong>and</strong> Mises on Probability<br />
Most economists are familiar with Knight’s distinction between “risk” <strong>and</strong><br />
“uncertainty.” Risk refers to situations in which the outcome of an event<br />
is unknown, but the decision maker knows the range of possible outcomes<br />
<strong>and</strong> the probabilities of each, such that anyone with the same information<br />
<strong>and</strong> beliefs would make the same prediction. Uncertainty, by contrast,<br />
characterizes situations in which the range of possible outcomes, let alone<br />
the relevant probabilities, is unknown. In this case the decision maker<br />
cannot follow a formal decision rule but must rely on an intuitive underst<strong>and</strong>ing<br />
of the situation—what Knight calls “judgment”—to anticipate<br />
what may occur. Risk, in this sense, refers to “a quantity susceptible<br />
of measurement,” <strong>and</strong> not a “true” uncertainty that cannot be quantified<br />
(Knight, 1921, p. 26). e essential function of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>,<br />
in Knight’s system, is to exercise judgment, particularly in the context of<br />
purchasing factors of production.<br />
Mises, in similar fashion, distinguished between “class probability”<br />
<strong>and</strong> “case probability.” e former describes situations in which an event<br />
may be classified as a unique element of a homogeneous class, the properties<br />
of which are known. No one can predict whether a particular house in<br />
a particular neighborhood will burn down this year, but insurance companies<br />
know how many similar houses in similar locations have burned in<br />
the past, <strong>and</strong> from this the likelihood of a particular house burning within<br />
a particular period can be estimated. Case probability applies to cases in<br />
which each event is unique, such that no general class probabilities can<br />
be defined. 1 Here Mises, as argued by Hoppe, builds on his brother’s<br />
1 O’Driscoll <strong>and</strong> Rizzo (1985) adopt the terms “typical events” <strong>and</strong> “unique events” to<br />
get at this distinction.
119<br />
defense of “frequentism,” the idea that the probability of a particular event<br />
is the limit value of its relative frequency in a series of trials. In this<br />
underst<strong>and</strong>ing, probabilities can be defined only in cases in which repeated<br />
trials are feasible—i.e., in situations where each event can be meaningfully<br />
compared to other events in the same class. Moreover, <strong>and</strong> for this reason,<br />
probabilities can only be defined ex post, as learned through experience, <strong>and</strong><br />
cannot exist a priori. Hence, Mises defines case probability, or uncertainty,<br />
as a case in which probabilities, in the frequentist sense, do not exist. 2<br />
Hoppe (2007) summarizes Knight’s <strong>and</strong> Mises’s views <strong>and</strong> argues persuasively<br />
that they are variants of Richard von Mises’s position. 3 Hoppe<br />
also goes beyond Mises in explaining why human action, in Mises’s sense of<br />
purposeful behavior, cannot be made part of a homogenous class. “Without<br />
a specified collective <strong>and</strong> an (assumedly) full count of its individual<br />
members <strong>and</strong> their various attributes no numerical probability statement<br />
is possible (or is, if made, arbitrary)” (Hoppe, 2007, p. 10). Of course, as<br />
Hoppe notes, we can define such classes in a technical sense—me writing<br />
this chapter is an element of the class “economists writing book chapters”—but<br />
defining the class is not sufficient for applying class probability<br />
to an event. ere must also be r<strong>and</strong>omness, or what Richard von Mises<br />
(1939, p. 24) calls “complete lawlessness,” within the class. And yet, this<br />
is not possible with human action:<br />
It is in connection with this r<strong>and</strong>omness requirement where Ludwig<br />
von Mises (<strong>and</strong> presumably Knight) see insuperable difficulties<br />
in applying probability theory to human actions. True, formallogically<br />
for every single action a corresponding collective can be<br />
defined. However, ontologically, human actions (whether of individuals<br />
or groups) cannot be grouped in “true” collectives but must<br />
be conceived as unique events. Why? As Ludwig von Mises would<br />
presumably reply, the assumption that one knows nothing about<br />
any particular event except its membership in a known class is false<br />
2 Hence the use of the term “case probability” is misleading; what Mises really means<br />
is “case non-probability,” or perhaps “case judgments without probabilities.” Confusingly,<br />
Mises also argues elsewhere that “[o]nly preoccupation with the mathematical treatment<br />
could result in the prejudice that probability always means frequency” (Mises, 1949,<br />
p. 107). Van den Hauwe (2007) argues, in contrast to Hoppe, that Mises’s position is<br />
in some ways closer to Keynes’s.<br />
3 One might also include Shackle’s notion of “self-destructive, non-seriable” decisions.<br />
See G.L.S. Schackle, Decision, Order, <strong>and</strong> Time in Human Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge<br />
University Press, 1961).
120 <br />
in the case of human actions; or, as Richard von Mises would put<br />
it, in the case of human actions we know a “selection rule” the<br />
application of which leads to fundamental changes regarding the<br />
relative frequency (likelihood) of the attribute in question (thus<br />
ruling out the use of the probability calculus). (Hoppe, 2007,<br />
p. 11)<br />
Hoppe touches briefly upon, without treating in detail, the subjective<br />
approach to probability, in which a priori probabilities are treated simply<br />
as beliefs, rather than the outcome of some objective process of repeated<br />
trial <strong>and</strong> observation. Hoppe quotes Richard von Mises’s (1939, p. 75)<br />
remark that subjectivists such as Keynes fail to recognize “that if we know<br />
nothing about a thing, we cannot say anything about its probability.” Adds<br />
Mises (1939, p. 76): “e peculiar approach of the subjectivists lies in the<br />
fact that they consider ‘I presume that these cases are equally probable,’ to<br />
be equivalent to ‘ese cases are equally probable,’ since, for them, probability<br />
is only a subjective notion.” Subjective probability has become central<br />
in contemporary microeconomic theory, however, particularly with<br />
the rise of Bayesian approaches to decision making. Agents acting under<br />
conditions of uncertainty are assumed to have prior beliefs—correct or<br />
incorrect—about the probabilities of various events. ese prior beliefs are<br />
exogenous, they may be common to a group of agents or unique to a particular<br />
agent, <strong>and</strong> they may or may not correspond to objective probabilities<br />
(in the frequentist sense). e Bayesian approach focuses on the procedure<br />
by which agents update these prior beliefs based on new information,<br />
<strong>and</strong> this updating is assumed to take place according to a formal rule<br />
(i.e., according to Bayes’s law). Hence, the ex post probability, in such<br />
a problem, contains an “objective” element, even if it is a revision of a<br />
purely subjective prior belief. 4<br />
Langlois (1982) argues for a tight connection between subjectivism in<br />
the Austrian sense of value theory <strong>and</strong> subjective probability theory, arguing<br />
that probabilities should be interpreted as beliefs about information<br />
structures, rather than objective events. “[I]t is not meaningful to talk<br />
about ‘knowing’ a probability or a probability distribution. A probability<br />
assessment reflects one’s state of information about an event; it is not some-<br />
4 Bayesian updating can also be applied to objective prior probabilities, presumably to<br />
give guidance to the decision maker in cases where repeated trials to determine the new ex<br />
post probability are not possible. e “Monty Hall paradox” is a classic example.
121<br />
thing ontologically separate whose value can be determined objectively”<br />
(Langlois, 1982, p. 8).<br />
What distinguishes case from class probability, according to Langlois,<br />
is the character of the decision maker’s information about the event. Objective<br />
probabilities (in the frequentist sense) are simply special cases of<br />
subjective probabilities in which the decision maker structures the problem<br />
in terms of classes of events. Entrepreneurship, in Langlois’s interpretation,<br />
can be described as the act of formalizing the decision problem. To use<br />
the language of decision theory, a non-<strong>entrepreneur</strong> (call him, following<br />
Kirzner, 1973, a Robbinsian maximizer) is presented with a decision tree,<br />
a set of outcomes, <strong>and</strong> the probabilities for each outcome, <strong>and</strong> simply uses<br />
backwards induction to solve the problem. e <strong>entrepreneur</strong>, as it were, redraws<br />
the tree, by noticing a possible option or outcome that other agents<br />
failed to see. e key distinction, according to Langlois, is not whether<br />
the decision tree is populated with objective or subjective probabilities,<br />
but whether the tree itself is exogenous (Knightian risk) or endogenous<br />
(Knightian uncertainty).<br />
Hoppe follows Richard von Mises in rejecting the subjectivist position<br />
(<strong>and</strong> obviously sees no contradiction between the frequentist approach to<br />
probability <strong>and</strong> the subjective theory of value). It is not clear exactly what<br />
is gained by redefining probabilities as “subjective with one information<br />
set” or “subjective with another information set.” As discussed in the next<br />
section, both Knight <strong>and</strong> Mises saw probability theory in economics as<br />
playing a particular role, namely allowing the theorist to distinguish situations<br />
in which prices are predictable, making profits <strong>and</strong> losses ephemeral,<br />
<strong>and</strong> situations in which prices can only be anticipated, using some form of<br />
judgment or Verstehen, by <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s. A subjectivist parameterization<br />
of Verstehen may be possible, without being useful.<br />
Uncertainty <strong>and</strong> the Entrepreneur<br />
Neither Knight nor Mises focused primarily on individual decision making<br />
per se, but on the role of decision making within the market system. “As<br />
economists,” Hoppe (2007, p. 4) observes, Knight <strong>and</strong> Mises “come upon<br />
the subject of probability indirectly, in conjunction with the question concerning<br />
the source of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial profits <strong>and</strong> losses.” 5 Indeed, while<br />
5 See also Buchanan <strong>and</strong> Di Pierro (1980).
122 <br />
Knight devotes a chapter of Risk, Uncertainty, <strong>and</strong> Profit to a detailed<br />
discussion of knowledge, reasoning, <strong>and</strong> learning, his main purpose is not<br />
to analyze the ontology of judgment, but to explain the practical workings<br />
of the market. Specifically, his purpose in developing his account of probability<br />
was to decompose business income into two constituent elements,<br />
interest <strong>and</strong> profit. Interest is a reward for forgoing present consumption,<br />
is determined by the relative time preferences of borrowers <strong>and</strong> lenders, <strong>and</strong><br />
would exist even in a world of certainty. Profit, by contrast, is a reward for<br />
anticipating the uncertain future more accurately than others (e.g., purchasing<br />
factors of production at market prices below the eventual selling<br />
price of the product), <strong>and</strong> exists only in a world of “true” uncertainty. In<br />
such a world, given that production takes time, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s will earn<br />
either profits or losses based on the differences between factor prices paid<br />
<strong>and</strong> product prices received.<br />
Ludwig von Mises, as discussed in chapter 5 above, gives uncertainty<br />
a central role in his theory of profit <strong>and</strong> loss, <strong>and</strong> his account of the impossibility<br />
of economic calculation under socialism. Because there are no<br />
factor markets under socialism, there are no factor prices, <strong>and</strong> hence no<br />
way for planners to choose efficiently among the virtually infinite range of<br />
possibilities for combining heterogeneous resources to make a particular set<br />
of consumer goods. Entrepreneurs under capitalism engage in this process<br />
of “appraisement” every day, weighing possible combinations of factors<br />
<strong>and</strong> trying to anticipate what consumers will buy <strong>and</strong> how much they’ll<br />
pay once the final goods <strong>and</strong> services are ready. Profit <strong>and</strong> loss provides<br />
essential feedback for <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s as they “test” their conjectures on the<br />
market.<br />
Why can’t a central planning board mimic the operations of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s?<br />
e key, for Mises, is that <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial appraisement is not a<br />
mechanical process of computing expected values using known probabilities,<br />
but a kind of Verstehen that cannot be formally modeled using decision<br />
theory. e <strong>entrepreneur</strong>, Mises (1949, p. 582) writes, “is a speculator, a<br />
man eager to utilize his opinion about the future structure of the market<br />
for business operations promising profits.” e <strong>entrepreneur</strong> relies on<br />
his “specific anticipative underst<strong>and</strong>ing of the conditions of the uncertain<br />
future,” an underst<strong>and</strong>ing that “defies any rules <strong>and</strong> systematization.”<br />
is concept of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial function is difficult to reconcile<br />
with the optimization framework of neoclassical economics. In this frame-
123<br />
work, either decision making is “rational,” meaning that it can be represented<br />
by formal decision rules, or it is purely r<strong>and</strong>om. T. W. Schultz<br />
(1980, pp. 437–38) poses the problem this way:<br />
[I]t is not sufficient to treat <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s solely as economic agents<br />
who only collect windfalls <strong>and</strong> bear losses that are unanticipated. If<br />
this is all they do, the much vaunted free enterprise system merely<br />
distributes in some unspecified manner the windfalls <strong>and</strong> losses that<br />
come as surprises. If <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship has some economic value it<br />
must perform a useful function which is constrained by scarcity,<br />
which implies that there is a supply <strong>and</strong> a dem<strong>and</strong> for their services.<br />
e key to underst<strong>and</strong>ing this passage is to recognize Schultz’s rejection,<br />
following Friedman <strong>and</strong> Savage (1948), of Knightian uncertainty. If<br />
all uncertainty can be parameterized in terms of (possibly subjective) probabilities,<br />
then decision making in the absence of such probabilities must<br />
be r<strong>and</strong>om. Any valuable kind of decision making must be modelable,<br />
must have a marginal revenue product, <strong>and</strong> must be determined by supply<br />
<strong>and</strong> dem<strong>and</strong>. For Knight, however, decision making in the absence of a<br />
formal decision rule or model (i.e., judgment) is not r<strong>and</strong>om, it is simply<br />
not modelable. It does not have a supply curve, because it is a residual<br />
or controlling factor that is inextricably linked with resource ownership.<br />
As discussed above, it is a kind of underst<strong>and</strong>ing, or Verstehen, that defies<br />
formal explanation but is rare <strong>and</strong> valuable. In short, without the concept<br />
of Knightian uncertainty, Knight’s idea of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial judgment makes<br />
little sense.<br />
Nor is judgment simply luck. 6 To be sure, one could imagine a model<br />
in which <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s are systematically biased, as in Busenitz <strong>and</strong> Barney<br />
(1997)—individuals become owner-<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s because they overestimate<br />
their own ability to anticipate future prices—<strong>and</strong> the supply of<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s is sufficiently large that at least a few guess correctly, <strong>and</strong><br />
earn profits. In such an economy there would be <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s, firms,<br />
profits, <strong>and</strong> losses, <strong>and</strong> profit (under uncertainty) would be distinct from<br />
interest. However, as Mises (1951) emphasizes, some individuals are more<br />
adept than others, over time, at anticipating future market conditions,<br />
<strong>and</strong> these individuals tend to acquire more resources while those whose<br />
forecasting skills are poor tend to exit the market. Indeed, for Mises,<br />
6 Demsetz (1983) compares Kirznerian alertness to luck.
124 <br />
the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial selection mechanism in which unsuccessful <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s—those<br />
who systematically overbid for factors, relative to eventual<br />
consumer dem<strong>and</strong>s—are eliminated from the market is the critical “market<br />
process” of capitalism. 7<br />
Conclusion<br />
Uncertainty, in Knight’s <strong>and</strong> Ludwig von Mises’s sense, is thus fundamental<br />
to underst<strong>and</strong>ing not only the profit-<strong>and</strong>-loss system, <strong>and</strong> the market’s<br />
process of allocating productive resources to their highest-valued users,<br />
but also the economic nature of the business firm itself. Unfortunately,<br />
contemporary neoclassical economics tends to reject both the distinction<br />
between case <strong>and</strong> class probability <strong>and</strong> the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>. If there is no<br />
“true” uncertainty, then profits are the result of monopoly power or r<strong>and</strong>om<br />
error. If any firm can do what any other firm does, if all firms are<br />
always on their production possibility frontiers, <strong>and</strong> if firms always make<br />
optimal choices of inputs, then there is little for the <strong>entrepreneur</strong> to do.<br />
Fortunately, the modern <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship literature has begun to recognize<br />
the need for a more sophisticated treatment of uncertainty (along<br />
with other cognitive issues—see the discussion in Alvarez <strong>and</strong> Barney,<br />
2007), <strong>and</strong> concepts of resource heterogeneity are common in the resource<strong>and</strong><br />
knowledge-based views of the firm, transaction-cost economics, <strong>and</strong><br />
the real-options approach to the firm. Far from rehashing old controversies,<br />
with the reexamination of Ludwig von Mises’s <strong>and</strong> Knight’s views on<br />
uncertainty, Hoppe’s paper provides fresh insight into the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>,<br />
the firm, <strong>and</strong> the market process.<br />
7 See chapter 7 below.
CHAPTER 7<br />
Price Theory <strong>and</strong> Austrian Economics †<br />
e Austrian approach underlies all the chapters in this volume. Austrian<br />
economics, I have argued, provides unique insight into the emergence,<br />
boundaries, <strong>and</strong> internal organization of the firm. Likewise, firms operate<br />
within a particular institutional context—they are the “isl<strong>and</strong>s of conscious<br />
power in [the] ocean of unconscious cooperation like lumps of butter<br />
coagulating in a pail of buttermilk” (D. H. Robertson, quoted in Coase<br />
1937, p. 388). at “ocean of unconscious cooperation” is the market, <strong>and</strong><br />
Austrians have developed a unique underst<strong>and</strong>ing of the market economy<br />
that sheds additional light into organizational <strong>and</strong> strategic issues.<br />
Indeed, the Austrian school has experienced a remarkable renaissance<br />
over the last five decades (Vaughn, 1994; Rothbard, 1995; Oakley, 1999;<br />
Salerno, 1999b, 2002). Austrian economics flourished originally in Vienna<br />
during the last three decades of the nineteenth century, <strong>and</strong> in Europe<br />
<strong>and</strong> North America through the 1920s, <strong>and</strong> then entered a prolonged<br />
eclipse in the 1930s <strong>and</strong> 1940s. Kept alive by important contributions<br />
from Hayek (1948), Mises (1949), Lachmann (1956), Rothbard (1962),<br />
Kirzner (1973), <strong>and</strong> others, the Austrian tradition emerged once more as<br />
† Published as “e Mundane Economics of the Austrian School” in Quarterly Journal<br />
of Austrian Economics 11, nos. 3–4 (2008): 165–87.<br />
125
126 <br />
an organized movement in the 1970s, <strong>and</strong> remains today an important<br />
alternative to the “mainstream” tradition of neoclassical economics.<br />
But what exactly is the distinct contribution of the Austrian school?<br />
How does it differ from other traditions, schools of thought, approaches,<br />
or movements within economics <strong>and</strong> its sister disciplines? As a social<br />
movement, the Austrian School possesses the formal markers usually taken<br />
to demarcate a school of thought, such as its own institutions—specialized<br />
journals, conferences, academic societies, <strong>and</strong> funding agencies—<strong>and</strong> the<br />
patterns of self-citation emphasized by Crane (1972). Here, though, I am<br />
concerned not with the sociology of the Austrian School, but with its core<br />
theoretical doctrines, propositions, <strong>and</strong> modes of analysis, particularly as<br />
they apply to everyday, pedestrian, ordinary economic problems. ese<br />
are the basic problems of price theory, capital theory, monetary theory,<br />
business-cycle theory, <strong>and</strong> the theory of interventionism, problems that<br />
are central to any approach within economics.<br />
Price theory—the theory of value, exchange, production, <strong>and</strong> market<br />
intervention—was what Mises (1933, p. 214) had in mind when he made<br />
the statement, often surprising to contemporary Austrians, that the Austrian,<br />
Walrasian, <strong>and</strong> Jevonian versions of marginalism “differ only in their<br />
mode of expressing the same fundamental idea <strong>and</strong> . . . are divided more<br />
by their terminology <strong>and</strong> by peculiarities of presentation than by the substance<br />
of their teachings.” ese are not the words of a young, enthusiastic<br />
author yet to appreciate the important differences among rival schools of<br />
thought; the essay was written in 1932, when Mises was a mature scholar.<br />
Hayek, likewise, wrote in his 1968 entry for the International Encyclopedia<br />
of the Social Sciences that his (fourth) generation of the Austrian School<br />
can hardly any longer be seen as a separate school in the sense of<br />
representing particular doctrines. A school has its greatest success<br />
when it ceases as such to exist because its leading ideals have become<br />
a part of the general dominant teaching. e Vienna school has to<br />
a great extent come to enjoy such a success. Hayek (1968a, p. 52)<br />
A few sentences later Hayek singles out “value <strong>and</strong> price theory” as the<br />
key Austrian contribution to modern economics (recognizing, of course,<br />
the influence of Marshall, <strong>and</strong> presumably Hicks, Allen, <strong>and</strong> Samuelson as<br />
well).<br />
ese statements hardly can mean that Mises <strong>and</strong> Hayek failed to recognize<br />
the important distinctions among the three marginalist traditions,
127<br />
given their substantial work on the methodology of the Austrian School<br />
(Mises, 1933, 1962; Hayek, 1952a). Instead, they indicate that both Mises<br />
<strong>and</strong> Hayek considered value <strong>and</strong> price theory to be central to the Austrian<br />
tradition, an emphasis broadly shared among all theoretical economists.<br />
Consider that Mises’s 1932 essay focuses on the differences between theoretical<br />
economics <strong>and</strong> the historicism of the Younger German Historical<br />
School. Indeed, Mises’s usual doctrinal targets were historicism, institutionalism,<br />
<strong>and</strong> other forms of what he considered to be “anti-economics,”<br />
not alternative versions of theoretical economics (let alone different str<strong>and</strong>s<br />
within the Austrian School). In the fight for theoretical economics, Mises<br />
considered the Lausanne <strong>and</strong> British neoclassical tradition as allies. All<br />
three marginalist traditions took value, price, exchange, <strong>and</strong> production<br />
theory to be their central core. 1<br />
Perhaps recognizing the close ties between Austrian value <strong>and</strong> price<br />
theory <strong>and</strong> that of mainstream economics, recent commentators have<br />
looked elsewhere for the distinguishing characteristics of the Austrian<br />
School. D. Klein (2008, p. 361), for example, identifies the Hayekian<br />
notion of “spontaneous order” as the main contribution of the Austrian<br />
tradition, urging that the label “Austrian,” with its specific historical <strong>and</strong><br />
geographical connotations, be replaced by “spontaneous order economics”<br />
or “Smith–Hayek economics.” Austrian economics, he argues, is part of a<br />
broader tradition that includes key figures in the Scottish Enlightenment,<br />
French classical liberals of the eighteenth <strong>and</strong> nineteenth century, <strong>and</strong><br />
twentieth-century thinkers such as Michael Polanyi. 2<br />
1 Admittedly, Hayek’s 1968 assessment of the Austrian School’s influence is harder to<br />
reconcile with his own insistence (Hayek, 1937, 1945, 1946) that neoclassical economists<br />
had failed to appreciate the role of knowledge <strong>and</strong> expectations. Hayek remained ambivalent<br />
on this point; in an unfinished draft for the New Palgrave Dictionary, written<br />
around 1982 (<strong>and</strong> reprinted in Hayek, 1992, pp. 53–56), Hayek describes indifferencecurve<br />
analysis as “the ultimate statement of more than half a century’s discussion in the<br />
tradition of the Austrian School,” adding that “by the third quarter of the twentieth century<br />
the Austrian School’s approach had become the leading form of microeconomic theory.”<br />
But he goes on to identify the school’s “main achievement” as clarifying the differences<br />
between “disciplines that deal with relatively simple phenomena, like mechanics, . .. <strong>and</strong><br />
the sciences of highly complex phenomena.”<br />
2 Koppl urges Austrian economists to join what he calls the “heterodox mainstream,” a<br />
body of literature embracing bounded rationality, rule following, institutions, cognition,<br />
<strong>and</strong> evolution, or BRICE. Austrians have “an opportunity to contribute to the heterodox<br />
mainstream of today <strong>and</strong> join, thereby, the emerging new orthodoxy of tomorrow” (Koppl,<br />
2006, pp. 237–38).
128 <br />
While I agree that the Austrian tradition is part of a larger, liberal<br />
movement, I see Austrian economics as nonetheless a distinct kind of economic<br />
analysis, <strong>and</strong> think that the essence of the Austrian approach is not<br />
subjectivism, the market process (disequilibrium), or spontaneous order,<br />
but what I call mundane economics—price theory, capital theory, monetary<br />
theory, business-cycle theory, <strong>and</strong> the theory of interventionism. Call<br />
this the “hard core” of Austrian economics. I maintain that this hard core<br />
is (1) distinct, <strong>and</strong> not merely a verbal rendition of mid-twentieth-century<br />
neoclassical economics; (2) the unique foundation for applied Austrian<br />
analysis (political economy, social theory, business administration, <strong>and</strong><br />
the like); <strong>and</strong> (3) a living, evolving body of knowledge, rooted in classic<br />
contributions of the past but not bound by them. 3<br />
A different view is found in Vaughn’s (1994) influential book on the<br />
modern Austrian movement. Vaughn’s characterization of the post-1974<br />
“Austrian revival” has proved controversial (Gordon, 1995; Rothbard,<br />
1995; Ekelund, 1997; ornton, 1999). Her interpretation of the first<br />
three generations of the Austrian School, by contrast, has received relatively<br />
little attention. Vaughn consistently characterizes the price theory<br />
of Menger, Böhm-Bawerk, Mises, <strong>and</strong> Rothbard as backward-looking,<br />
inconsistent, <strong>and</strong> often wrong. eir elaborations of mundane economics,<br />
she says, are mainly verbal “neoclassical” economics, because they rely<br />
heavily on equilibrium constructs; indeed, Menger’s price theory is that<br />
of “half-formed neoclassical economist” (Vaughn, 1994, p. 19). Menger’s<br />
distinctive Austrian contribution, Vaughn (1994, pp. 18–19) argues, is<br />
“his many references to problems of knowledge <strong>and</strong> ignorance, his discussions<br />
of the emergence <strong>and</strong> function of institutions, the importance<br />
of articulating processes of adjustment, <strong>and</strong> his many references to the<br />
progress of mankind.” ese issues, which attracted considerable attention<br />
during the “Austrian revival” of the 1970s, are discussed in Menger’s 1883<br />
book Untersuchungen über die Methode der Socialwissenschaften und der<br />
politischen Oekonomie insbesondere [Investigations into the method of the<br />
social sciences with special reference to economics]. ey are largely absent<br />
from the Principles, however.<br />
3 My focus here is economic theory, not methodology, so my point is different from<br />
Rothbard’s (1995) argument that Misesian praxeology, not the alternative Popperian,<br />
evolutionary epistemology of the later Hayek or the “radical subjectivism” of Lachmann,<br />
is the proper starting point for Austrian economics.
129<br />
Specifically, Vaughn maintains that there is a fundamental contradiction<br />
in Menger <strong>and</strong> Mises’s underst<strong>and</strong>ing of markets because they simultaneously<br />
employ equilibrium theorizing <strong>and</strong> talk about time, uncertainty,<br />
“process,” <strong>and</strong> in Menger’s case, institutions. Mises’s Human Action, for<br />
example, combined “some fundamental Mengerian insights with the apparatus<br />
of neoclassical price theory to the detriment of both” (Vaughn,<br />
1994, p. 70).<br />
is chapter argues against this characterization of Menger, Mises,<br />
<strong>and</strong> their contemporaries. As explained below, Austrian economists from<br />
Menger to Rothbard were fully aware of time, uncertainty, knowledge,<br />
expectations, institutions, <strong>and</strong> market processes. Indeed, their underst<strong>and</strong>ing<br />
of these issues was sophisticated. ey employed equilibrium theorizing,<br />
but in a precise <strong>and</strong> deliberate manner. ey understood clearly<br />
the distinction between their own underst<strong>and</strong>ings of mundane economics<br />
<strong>and</strong> that of their Walrasian <strong>and</strong> Jevonian colleagues. ey devoted their<br />
energies to developing <strong>and</strong> communicating the principles of mundane economics,<br />
not because they failed to grasp the importance of knowledge,<br />
process, <strong>and</strong> coordination, but because they regarded these latter issues as<br />
subordinate to the main task of economic science, namely the construction<br />
of a more satisfactory theory of value, production, exchange, price, money,<br />
capital, <strong>and</strong> intervention.<br />
My contention is that mundane Austrian economics not only provides<br />
a solid foundation for addressing conventional economic questions<br />
about markets <strong>and</strong> industries, regulation, comparative economic systems,<br />
macroeconomic fluctuations, trade, <strong>and</strong> growth, but also helps place organizational<br />
<strong>and</strong> managerial issues in sharper relief. A mistaken focus on<br />
subjectivism, spontaneous order, radical uncertainty, <strong>and</strong> the like as the<br />
essence of the Austrian contribution has led management scholars to overlook<br />
the importance of the Austrian theories of price formation, capital,<br />
money, <strong>and</strong> economic fluctuations, theories that have important implications<br />
for firms <strong>and</strong> <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s.<br />
Central Themes of Austrian Economics Before 1974<br />
Before 1974, the bulk of Austrian economics dealt with mundane economic<br />
subjects. Menger’s Principles (1871), for example, deals entirely<br />
with value, price, <strong>and</strong> exchange (plus a short section on money). Menger
130 <br />
intended the Principles as an introduction to a longer, more comprehensive<br />
work. e planned sequel was never written, but from Menger’s notes,<br />
Hayek (1934, p. 69) tells us, “we know that the second part was to treat<br />
‘interest, wages, rent, income, credit, <strong>and</strong> paper money,’ a third ‘applied’<br />
part the theory of production <strong>and</strong> commerce, while a fourth part was to<br />
discuss criticism of the present economic system <strong>and</strong> proposals for economic<br />
reform.” e three volumes of Böhm-Bawerk’s great treatise, Capital<br />
<strong>and</strong> Interest (1884–1912), deal primarily with capital <strong>and</strong> interest theory<br />
but also include the famous sections (in volume II, Positive eory of Capital)<br />
on value <strong>and</strong> price, introducing the “marginal-pairs” approach to price<br />
formation. Wieser’s Social Economics (1914) ranges more widely, as did<br />
Wieser throughout his career, but still focuses primarily on fundamental<br />
questions of value, exchange, production, factor pricing, <strong>and</strong> international<br />
trade. e Anglo-American economists influenced by the Austrians—Phillip<br />
Wicksteed, Frank Fetter, Henry Davenport, <strong>and</strong> J. B. Clark,<br />
for example—also viewed the core of Austrian economics as its theory of<br />
value <strong>and</strong> exchange, not knowledge, expectations, <strong>and</strong> disequilibrium. 4<br />
Possibly the most striking example of an Austrian commitment to<br />
mundane economics is Rothbard’s Man, Economy, <strong>and</strong> State (1962). Of<br />
the 12 chapters in the original edition, all but two focus on the details of<br />
value, price, exchange, capital, money, competition, <strong>and</strong> the like. (Chapter<br />
1 deals with methodological <strong>and</strong> ontological issues, chapter 12 with<br />
the theory of government intervention.) Production theory alone gets five<br />
chapters. Even if Power <strong>and</strong> Market is included, the book contains little<br />
about subjective expectations, learning, equilibration, emergent orders,<br />
<strong>and</strong> the like. Perhaps for this reason, Vaughn (1994, p. 96) states that<br />
4 Interestingly, the third- <strong>and</strong> fourth-generation Austrians were thoroughly steeped not<br />
only in the writings of their Viennese predecessors, but also those of the Anglo-American<br />
Mengerian price theorists. Hayek (1963a, p. 32) notes that “in the early post-war period<br />
the work of the American theorists John Bates Clark, omas Nixon Carver, Irving Fisher,<br />
Frank Fetter, <strong>and</strong> Herbert Joseph Davenport was more familiar to us in Vienna than that of<br />
any other foreign economists except perhaps the Swedes.” Hayek quotes a letter from Clark<br />
to Robert Zuckerk<strong>and</strong>l in which Clark praises Zuckerk<strong>and</strong>l’s eory of Price (1899), saying<br />
“[n]othing gives me greater pleasure than to render full honor to the eminent thinkers,<br />
mainly Austrians, who were earlier in this field than myself, <strong>and</strong> who have carried their<br />
analysis to greater lengths” (Hayek, 1939a, p. 39) Hayek adds that “at least some of the<br />
members of the second or third generation of the Austrian School owed nearly as much to<br />
the teaching of J. B. Clark as to their immediate teachers.” Salerno (2006) discusses Clark’s<br />
influence on Mises.
131<br />
Rothbard’s treatise “must have seemed to a typical reader to be more or<br />
less familiar economics presented almost exclusively in words with a few<br />
controversial definitions, <strong>and</strong> some strange discontinuous graphs.”<br />
Man, Economy, <strong>and</strong> State was of course intended as a more elementary<br />
<strong>and</strong> systematic presentation of the contents of Mises’s Human Action<br />
(1949), which covers a broader range of philosophical, historical, <strong>and</strong> sociological<br />
subjects (Stromberg, 2004). Human Action begins, for example,<br />
with a lengthy methodological <strong>and</strong> ontological sections <strong>and</strong> chapters on<br />
“Time” <strong>and</strong> “Uncertainty.” Still, the bulk of the book—the 16 chapters<br />
comprising Parts 3, 4, <strong>and</strong> 5—deal with the core economic subjects of<br />
value, price, <strong>and</strong> exchange. e same is true, at least partly, of another important<br />
postwar contribution to Austrian economics, Lachmann’s Capital<br />
<strong>and</strong> Its Structure (1956). Lachmann’s book includes lengthy <strong>and</strong> insightful<br />
discussions of expectations (chapter 2) <strong>and</strong> “process analysis” (chapter<br />
3), defined as “a causal-genetic method of studying economic change,<br />
tracing the effects of decisions made independently of each other by a<br />
number of individuals through time, <strong>and</strong> showing how the incompatibility<br />
of these decisions after a time necessitates their revision” (Lachmann,<br />
1956, p. 39). 5 What Lachmann has in mind here is the continual readjustment<br />
of the economy’s capital structure—he calls it “reshuffling” <strong>and</strong><br />
“regrouping”—as firms experiment with various combinations of capital<br />
goods. Clearly, however, Lachmann has a specific purpose in mind,<br />
namely explaining the implications of capital heterogeneity for the theory<br />
of production, economic growth, <strong>and</strong> the business cycle. e book is not<br />
focused primarily on meta-theoretic concerns, but on the economic theory<br />
of capital itself.<br />
e main exception to this pattern is Hayek, whose influential essays<br />
on knowledge (Hayek, 1937, 1945) <strong>and</strong> competition (Hayek, 1948) appeared<br />
in the middle of the century. 6 Of course, Hayek’s reputation at this<br />
time was based on his technical contributions to monetary <strong>and</strong> businesscycle<br />
theory (see the essays collected in Hayek, 2008), <strong>and</strong> Hayek’s main<br />
interests, from his first writings in the late 1920s until his move to Chicago<br />
5 Lachmann cites Hicks (1939), Lindahl (1939), <strong>and</strong> Lundberg (1937) as the main<br />
exponents of process analysis, though these theorists are not usually included in the<br />
contemporary “market process” tradition.<br />
6 Morgenstern (1935) also deals with expectations <strong>and</strong> their role in the formation of<br />
economic equilibria.
132 <br />
in 1950, remained economic theory, conventionally defined. 7 More generally,<br />
while many members <strong>and</strong> fellow travelers of the Austrian School<br />
wrote on broad social themes, all regarded technical economics as the heart<br />
of the Mengerian project.<br />
By contrast, O’Driscoll <strong>and</strong> Rizzo’s Economics of Time <strong>and</strong> Ignorance<br />
(1985) contains only a few references to Menger <strong>and</strong> none to Böhm-<br />
Bawerk (outside Roger Garrison’s chapter on capital). After an introduction<br />
it contains chapters on “Static versus Dynamic Subjectivism,”<br />
“Knowledge <strong>and</strong> Decisions,” “e Dynamic Conception of Time,” <strong>and</strong><br />
“Uncertainty in Equilibrium.” An application section follows, which features<br />
chapters on “Competition <strong>and</strong> Discovery,” “e Political Economy<br />
of Competition <strong>and</strong> Monopoly,” <strong>and</strong> chapters on capital <strong>and</strong> money. At<br />
least half of the book, then, deals with ontological or meta-theoretic issues<br />
while the core principles of valuation, price formation, <strong>and</strong> production<br />
theory occupy relatively little space. Or consider the edited volume e<br />
Market Process: Essays in Contemporary Austrian Economics (Boettke <strong>and</strong><br />
Prychitko, 1994). Of the book’s five main parts, only one, “Money <strong>and</strong><br />
Banking,” deals primarily with a conventional economic subject; a section<br />
on “Cost <strong>and</strong> Choice” includes a chapter on utility theory, but even this<br />
chapter is primarily ontological, while the remaining sections focus on<br />
meta-theoretic issues (with an applied section on political economy).<br />
One might infer that these works take the basic body of causal-realist<br />
price theory as given, as so well established that further elaboration is<br />
unnecessary, thus preferring to concentrate on advanced applications,<br />
methodological foundations, critiques, <strong>and</strong> so on. However, as attested by<br />
the statements from Vaughn (1994) quoted above, Austrians after 1974 by<br />
7 By the 1950s, Hayek tells us,<br />
I had . . . become somewhat stale as an economist <strong>and</strong> felt much out of<br />
sympathy with the direction in which economics was developing. ough<br />
I had still regarded the work I had done during the 1940s on scientific<br />
method, the history of ideas, <strong>and</strong> political theory as temporary excursions<br />
into another field, I found it difficult to return to systematic teaching of<br />
economic theory <strong>and</strong> felt it rather as a release that I was not forced to do<br />
so by my teaching duties. (1994, p. 126)<br />
roughout his career at the London School of Economics from 1932 to 1949, Hayek’s<br />
main teaching obligation had been the required graduate course in economic theory. Of<br />
course, he did produce his first important work in classical liberal political economy, e<br />
Road to Serfdom, in 1944.
133<br />
no means accepted the core principles of Austrian price theory as correct,<br />
or even as a distinct approach at all, as opposed to a verbal rendition of<br />
Walrasian <strong>and</strong> Marshallian economics. Instead, Austrians after 1974 have<br />
tended to regard issues like knowledge, uncertainty, <strong>and</strong> process as the<br />
distinct contribution of the Austrian School.<br />
As noted above, for Vaughn (1994) the most “Austrian” of the classic<br />
Austrian texts is Menger’s 1883 collection of methodological essays.<br />
ese essays attempted to defend Menger’s theoretical approach against the<br />
methods of the (Younger) German Historical School provoking the fierce<br />
reaction by Gustav Schmoller <strong>and</strong> his followers that became a full-blown<br />
Methodenstreit. Here Menger presents his theory of “organic” institutions,<br />
what Hayek (1973–79, p. 43) termed “spontaneous order.” 8 How is it<br />
possible, Menger (1883, p. 146) asks, “that institutions which serve the<br />
common welfare <strong>and</strong> are extremely significant for its development come<br />
into being without a common will directed toward establishing them?”<br />
Menger’s (1892) essay on money provides a detailed example of this process,<br />
in which a commonly accepted medium of exchange emerges as a byproduct<br />
of individual traders’ decisions to adopt particular commodities as<br />
money. A monetary st<strong>and</strong>ard, in this sense, is the “result of human action<br />
but not the result of human design” (Hayek, 1948, p. 7). 9 Do these ideas<br />
relate to the price theory outlined in Menger’s Principles, from which they<br />
are largely absent?<br />
First, note that the passage dealing with spontaneous order occupies<br />
just two short chapters (30 pages in the 1981 English edition) in a 16-<br />
chapter (237-page) book. ese chapters are undeniably profound <strong>and</strong><br />
have exerted an important influence on later Austrians’ underst<strong>and</strong>ing of<br />
social phenomena (White, 1981). However, the bulk of the text deals with<br />
Menger’s defense of economics as a “theoretical science,” with “exact laws,”<br />
rather than a historical science dealing with historically contingent, “national<br />
economies.” Second, Menger’s examples of organic phenomena are<br />
not limited to language, religion, law, competition, <strong>and</strong> money. Indeed,<br />
Menger introduces the concept of emergent social processes with a more<br />
mundane example: prices.<br />
8 See Klein (1997) <strong>and</strong> Klein <strong>and</strong> Orsborn (2009) on the differences between Menger’s<br />
account of institutions <strong>and</strong> Hayek’s underst<strong>and</strong>ing of spontaneous order. Klein (1997)<br />
argues that Menger’s notion of coordination is closer to Schelling’s (1978) than Hayek’s.<br />
9 See also Klein <strong>and</strong> Selgin (2000).
134 <br />
[We] could point to a long series of phenomena of this kind. We<br />
intend, however, to set forth the above idea by an example that is<br />
so striking that it excludes any doubt of the meaning of what we<br />
plan to present here. We mean the example of the social prices<br />
[i.e., market prices] of goods. As is well known, there are in individual<br />
cases completely or at least in part the result of positive social<br />
factors, e.g., prices under the sway of tax <strong>and</strong> wage laws, etc. But<br />
as a rule these are formed <strong>and</strong> changed free of any state influence<br />
directed toward regulating them, free of any social agreement, as<br />
unintended results of social movement. e same thing holds true<br />
of interest on capital, ground rents, speculative profit, etc. (Menger,<br />
1883, p. 146)<br />
In other words, Menger’s concept of spontaneous order is simply the process<br />
by which voluntary interaction establishes social regularities such as<br />
prices, wages, interest rates, <strong>and</strong> rents. Not only is the market system itself<br />
a product of spontaneous order, in this sense, but so are individual market<br />
prices.<br />
Menger’s presentation here challenges the usual distinction (Davis<br />
<strong>and</strong> North, 1971) between the institutional environment (or “rules of the<br />
game”) <strong>and</strong> the institutional arrangements (the “play of the game”) that<br />
emerge in that environment. e new institutional economics (Klein,<br />
2000; Williamson, 2000) typically treats the former—the legal system,<br />
language, norms <strong>and</strong> customs—as the results of human action but not<br />
human design, while the latter—firms, contracts, the terms of specific<br />
transactions—are seen as the product of deliberate design by particular<br />
agents. Menger treats both kinds of institutions as “spontaneous,”<br />
meaning (generally) undirected by state planners. In other words, for<br />
Menger, price theory is not a technical discipline independent of research<br />
on spontaneous orders; price theory is spontaneous-order research. Again,<br />
in Menger’s (1883, pp. 158–59) words:<br />
[M]arket prices, wages, interest rates, etc., have come into existence<br />
in exactly the same way as those social institutions which we mentioned<br />
in the previous section. For they, too, as a rule are not the<br />
result of socially teleological causes, but the unintended result of<br />
innumerable efforts of economic subjects pursuing individual interests....<br />
e methods for the exact underst<strong>and</strong>ing of the origin of<br />
the “organically” created social structures <strong>and</strong> those for the solution<br />
of the main problems of exact economics are by nature identical.
135<br />
Equilibrium in Austrian Price Theory<br />
Menger’s economics, as has been documented elsewhere (Caldwell, 1990;<br />
Salerno, 1999a; Klein, 2006), is causal-realist, marginalist, <strong>and</strong> subjectivist.<br />
Despite frequent assertions that Austrian economics is defined as<br />
“market process economics” or “disequilibrium economics,” the concept of<br />
equilibrium features prominently in causal-realist economics (Hülsmann,<br />
2000; MacKenzie, 2008) At least four distinct equilibrium constructs appear<br />
in Austrian analysis. Following Mises’s terminology, as amended by<br />
Salerno (1994a), we can call them the plain state of rest (PSR), the fully<br />
arbitraged state of rest or Wicksteedian state of rest (WSR), the final state<br />
of rest (FSR), <strong>and</strong> the evenly rotating economy (ERE). Two of these, the<br />
PSR <strong>and</strong> WSR, describe real-world outcomes, while the FSR <strong>and</strong> ERE are<br />
what Mises called “imaginary constructions,” hypothetical scenarios that<br />
do not obtain in reality, but are useful in economic reasoning, allowing the<br />
theorist to isolate the effects of particular actions or circumstances, holding<br />
all else constant.<br />
e PSR obtains every day in the real world, each time a buyer <strong>and</strong><br />
seller agree on a price <strong>and</strong> make an exchange, momentarily exhausting the<br />
gains from trade. (Menger called these “points of rest”; Böhm-Bawerk,<br />
“momentary equilibria.”) A set of potential buyers <strong>and</strong> sellers interacting<br />
in a defined market space can also be described as being in a PSR once the<br />
trading period is completed. “When the stock market closes, the brokers<br />
have carried out all orders which could be executed at the market price.<br />
Only those potential sellers <strong>and</strong> buyers who consider the market prices<br />
too low or too high respectively have not sold or bought” (Mises, 1949,<br />
p. 245). At this point “[a] state of rest emerges.” e PSR persists as long<br />
as market participants’ relative valuations of the goods <strong>and</strong> services being<br />
exchanged (including speculative dem<strong>and</strong>s) remain constant.<br />
PSR prices are not necessarily those that would emerge in the “final<br />
state of rest” (FSR), a hypothetical situation, never actually achieved, following<br />
a sequence of events in which the basic data of the market are frozen<br />
but market participants continue to trade, revising their beliefs about other<br />
participants’ reservation prices <strong>and</strong> obtaining better information about<br />
technological possibilities <strong>and</strong> consumer dem<strong>and</strong>s, until all feasible gains<br />
from trade are exhausted. After analyzing the PSR, “[w]e go a step further.<br />
We pay attention to factors which are bound to bring about a tendency
136 <br />
toward price changes. We try to find out to what goal this tendency must<br />
lead before all its driving force is exhausted <strong>and</strong> a new state of rest emerges”<br />
Mises (1949, p. 246). In the real economy, of course, these underlying<br />
factors are constantly changing, <strong>and</strong> hence the FSR is never achieved. 10<br />
e FSR is used to trace the effects of changes in tastes, technology,<br />
expectations, resource availability, <strong>and</strong> other exogenous variables on patterns<br />
of resource allocation by focusing on a sequence of PSR equilibria in<br />
which market participants adjust their behavior until all gains from trade<br />
have been exhausted. As Salerno (2006) explains,<br />
FSR analysis also begins from a fully adjusted economy in which<br />
profits are currently zero. However in this construction the past<br />
<strong>and</strong> future are relevant to economic planning. Alterations in the<br />
economic data are permitted to occur but only one at a time <strong>and</strong><br />
with a lapse of time between changes sufficiently long to permit a<br />
complete adjustment of prices <strong>and</strong> production in the economy to<br />
each change, thus resulting in the emergence of a new zero-profit<br />
FSR before another change in the economic data can occur. During<br />
the transition to the new FSR, profits <strong>and</strong> losses appear across the<br />
economy spurring <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s to shuffle <strong>and</strong> reshuffle resources<br />
<strong>and</strong> capital combinations to take advantage of profit opportunities<br />
<strong>and</strong> avoid losses.<br />
Salerno (2006) notes that Mises modeled his construct after Clark’s notion<br />
of “dynamic” equilibrium, similar to what is called “comparative statics”<br />
in contemporary neoclassical economics. Mises “used Clark’s construct<br />
in formulating a ‘step-by step’ or ‘process’ analysis logically demonstrating<br />
the sequence of changes which occur throughout the entire interdependent<br />
system of markets in the transition to the new FSR”—for example, in<br />
10 Machlup (1958, p. 57) seems to have the FSR in mind when he writes:<br />
To characterize a concrete situation “observed” in reality as one of “equilibrium”<br />
is to commit the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. At best, the<br />
observer may mean to assert that in his opinion the observed <strong>and</strong> duly<br />
identified situation corresponds to a model in his mind in which a set of<br />
selected variables determine a certain outcome, <strong>and</strong> that he finds no inherent<br />
cause of change—that is, that he believes only an outside disturbance,<br />
not in evidence at the moment, could produce a change in these variables.<br />
is, of course, is a personal judgment, meaningful only if the variables are<br />
fully enumerated <strong>and</strong> the assumptions about their interrelations are clearly<br />
stated.
137<br />
tracing the effects of an increase in the money supply on prices <strong>and</strong> resource<br />
allocation. (Modern comparative statics, however, as formalized by Hicks,<br />
1939, <strong>and</strong> Samuelson, 1947, abstracts from the element of time.)<br />
It is important to emphasize that the movement from PSR to FSR takes<br />
place in analytical time, not calendar time; FSR analysis is a logical exercise,<br />
not meant to explain the sequence of events taking place in real markets,<br />
for the underlying “data” are in constant flux. is point is not well<br />
understood, even among Austrians. For example, Boettke <strong>and</strong> Prychitko<br />
(1994) caution against overreliance on equilibrium theorizing in Austrian<br />
economics, even characterizing some of the classic contributions to Austrian<br />
economics as “neoclassical Austrianism.” 11 “When Austrians refer to<br />
proximity to an end state in their treatment of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship they may<br />
be relying too much on the equilibrium construct” (Boettke <strong>and</strong> Prychitko,<br />
1994, p. 65). However, the causal-realistic price theory of Menger <strong>and</strong><br />
his followers does not make any assumptions about the “proximity” of<br />
PSR or WSR prices to their FSR values in calendar time. Instead, the<br />
theorist uses the imaginary construction of the FSR to explain what pattern<br />
of activities <strong>and</strong> ownership would obtain following an exogenous change<br />
in preferences, resource availability, or technological knowledge, holding<br />
all else constant. e causal-realist theorist does not assume that such<br />
adjustments take place in calendar time; indeed, this imaginary process<br />
would be impossible in a world in which preferences, stocks, technology,<br />
<strong>and</strong> the like are constantly changing.<br />
Lying between the PSR <strong>and</strong> the FSR is the WSR, a realistic concept<br />
in which trading takes place while preferences remain constant, with market<br />
participants revising their beliefs about other participants’ reservation<br />
prices until all feasible gains from trade are exhausted. Wicksteed’s (1910,<br />
pp. 219–28) fruit market provides the canonical example. 12 By the end of<br />
each market day, a specified period in which preferences, stocks of goods,<br />
<strong>and</strong> the set of traders remains fixed, what Wicksteed calls “the equilibrating<br />
price” has been achieved. In this situation, “the marginal position of the<br />
commodity in question is identical upon the relative scales of all who have<br />
11 ough specific Austrian writings are not identified, a footnote refers to “relevant<br />
sections” of Mises (1949), Rothbard (1962), Kirzner (1973, 1979, 1985b) <strong>and</strong> High<br />
(1980, 1982, 1986) as “neoclassical Austrianism.”<br />
12 See also Marget (1938–42, vol. 2), Kirzner (1963, pp. 105–35) <strong>and</strong> Salerno (1994a,<br />
pp. 97–106).
138 <br />
secured a supply, <strong>and</strong> higher on them all than it is on the scales of any of<br />
those who have secured no supply” (Wicksteed, 1910, p. 216). e market<br />
day is a hypothetical construct, in that it holds only as long as preferences,<br />
technical knowledge, stocks of goods available for exchange, <strong>and</strong> so on are<br />
held constant. And yet, the WSR is not a purely imaginary construction,<br />
as this process of equilibration takes place in real markets, at least over<br />
short periods of calendar time.<br />
Assuming the underlying data are unchanged, [this] approach<br />
yields a coherent explanation of how, as information becomes<br />
more complete <strong>and</strong> speculation more accurate, PSRs succeed one<br />
another until the intermediate equilibrium situation represented<br />
by a fully-arbitraged state of rest (or WSR) is brought into being.<br />
(Salerno, 1994a, p. 102)<br />
e ERE, used by Mises (1949, pp. 247–51) <strong>and</strong> Rothbard (1962,<br />
pp. 320–28), serves a more limited function. e ERE is an imaginary<br />
construction in which preferences, technology, <strong>and</strong> resource availability<br />
are held constant <strong>and</strong> agents are assumed to repeat the same set of actions<br />
each market day. Economic activity takes place—there is production,<br />
consumption, saving, <strong>and</strong> investment—but <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s can predict the<br />
future with certainty. e main function of the ERE is to show that in<br />
the absence of uncertainty, factor prices would be bid up to their full<br />
discounted marginal revenue products, eliminating <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial profit<br />
<strong>and</strong> loss. Business owners would still earn interest income if they advance<br />
wages to workers <strong>and</strong> other factor owners before production is completed<br />
<strong>and</strong> sales receipts are realized, <strong>and</strong> they can earn implicit wages on the<br />
labor they supply to the firm, but there can be no profits <strong>and</strong> losses. Only<br />
by using such a construction, Mises argued, can the theorist decompose<br />
real-world business income into interest, the owner’s implicit wage, <strong>and</strong><br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial profit. 13<br />
As noted above, the PSR <strong>and</strong> WSR are intended as realistic phenomena,<br />
not hypothetical constructs (like the FSR <strong>and</strong> ERE). Marshall’s<br />
“market-day equilibrium” is also intended to explain real-world pricing in<br />
markets, something like Wicksteed’s WSR, but includes arbitrary assump-<br />
13 For additional discussion see Cowen <strong>and</strong> Fink (1985), Gunning (1989), <strong>and</strong> MacKenzie<br />
(2008).
139<br />
tions about the marginal utility of money (Walker, 1969). 14 Likewise,<br />
Hicks’s “temporary equilibrium”—a form of Walrasian general equilibrium<br />
that incorporates agents’ expectations of prices that will obtain in<br />
future trading periods—shares elements of the Austrian WSR. However,<br />
it is, like Walrasian equilibrium, a deliberately artificial construct, not<br />
meant to explain actual market prices but as a modeling step in explaining<br />
a concept of intertemporal equilibrium (De Vroey, 2002).<br />
Before 1974, then, Austrian economists used the realistic equilibrium<br />
constructs of the PSR <strong>and</strong> WSR, <strong>and</strong> the imaginary constructions of the<br />
FSR <strong>and</strong> ERE, to explain the basic phenomena of value, production, exchange,<br />
<strong>and</strong> price. eir work was built on Menger’s value theory <strong>and</strong><br />
its underlying concepts of purpose, subjectivism, <strong>and</strong> uncertainty, <strong>and</strong> the<br />
extensions of the Mengerian approach to deal with price formation under<br />
direct exchange (Böhm-Bawerk’s horse market, Wicksteed’s fruit market),<br />
monetary calculation <strong>and</strong> indirect exchange, capital theory (the time structure<br />
of production <strong>and</strong> the heterogeneity of capital goods), FSR analysis,<br />
the effects of government intervention (business-cycle theory, regulation),<br />
<strong>and</strong> other mundane aspects of commercial life.<br />
Knowledge, Expectations, <strong>and</strong> the Convergence to Equilibrium<br />
Since the “Austrian revival” of the 1970s the mundane economic subjects<br />
described above have comm<strong>and</strong>ed relatively little attention. e most popular<br />
issues <strong>and</strong> topics among modern Austrians have included fractionalreserve<br />
“free banking,” political economy, <strong>and</strong> the methodological foundations<br />
of the Austrian School. During the 1980s, a lengthy debate took<br />
place over the existence of “equilibrating tendencies” in the market economy,<br />
with Kirzner <strong>and</strong> Lachmann representing opposite positions (Selgin,<br />
1988). Kirzner argued that the existence of profit opportunities under disequilibrium,<br />
<strong>and</strong> that the tendency of alert <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s to discover <strong>and</strong><br />
exploit these opportunities, was sufficient to establish a general, systematic<br />
tendency toward equilibrium. Lachmann, in contrast, maintained that in<br />
the face of “radical” uncertainty, including subjective expectations, equilibrating<br />
tendencies could not be assumed, absent some explanation for<br />
14 Just as Mises’s (hypothetical) FSR results from a sequence of PSRs, Marshall’s “normal<br />
equilibrium” is brought about by a series of market-day equilibria (De Vroey, 2002).
140 <br />
learning. Knowledge, expectations, <strong>and</strong> the convergence to equilibrium<br />
came to occupy center stage in the Austrian research program.<br />
My purpose in this section is not to analyze this debate, but to ask<br />
why the problem of convergence to equilibrium received so little attention<br />
in early Austrian writings. Neither Menger, Böhm-Bawerk, Wieser, the<br />
Anglo-American Austrians, nor Mises devoted much effort to this issue. If<br />
the presence or absence of equilibrating tendencies in the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
market process is the central problem of price theory, why did the early<br />
Austrians fail to recognize it?<br />
First, the modern Austrian literature uses the term equilibrium quite<br />
broadly <strong>and</strong> often inconsistently. O’Driscoll <strong>and</strong> Rizzo (1985, p. 39),<br />
for example, refer to “correct” <strong>and</strong> “incorrect” prices, identifying the<br />
latter with “non-equilibrium” prices, although the equilibrium construct<br />
is not defined or discussed in detail until much later in the discussion.<br />
Vaughn (1994) refers to “equilibrium models” (p. 2), “equilibrium states”<br />
(p. 3), “equilibrium theorizing” (p. 8), “equilibrium constructs” (p. 11),<br />
<strong>and</strong> more—all within the first dozen pages!—but does not provide a formal<br />
definition of any equilibrium concept until the discussion of Mises in her<br />
fourth chapter (pp. 81–82). ere she characterizes Mises’s distinction<br />
among three equilibrium constructs (PSR, FSR, <strong>and</strong> ERE) as “surprisingly<br />
unsatisfying” (p. 81), seemingly treating the PSR <strong>and</strong> FSR as equivalent to<br />
Marshallian short-run <strong>and</strong> long-run partial equilibrium, respectively, <strong>and</strong><br />
the ERE as Mises’s own idiosyncratic, <strong>and</strong> unhelpful, construction. 15<br />
More generally, the modern Austrian literature on “disequilibrium” is<br />
not always careful to define the concept of equilibrium, <strong>and</strong> virtually never<br />
discusses distinctions among the PSR, WSR, FSR, or ERE. O’Driscoll <strong>and</strong><br />
Rizzo (1985, pp. 80–85) argue that modern Austrians typically have some<br />
notion of “plan coordination” in mind. Indeed, all four equilibrium constructs<br />
described above involve a form of plan coordination, in the sense<br />
that individuals engaged in exchange hold shared beliefs about what is to be<br />
exchanged, what price will be paid, <strong>and</strong> so on. However, as O’Driscoll <strong>and</strong><br />
Rizzo (1985, p. 80) observe, plan coordination—they call it “Hayekian<br />
equilibrium”—is a very general concept; it “can be partial or general, <strong>and</strong><br />
15 Inexplicably, she accuses Rothbard (1962) of confusing the FSR <strong>and</strong> ERE, though<br />
without providing any specific page reference (Vaughn, 1994, p. 82, n 35). She also says<br />
Mises “seemed to confuse his two [sic] distinct notions of equilibrium.”
141<br />
can prevail over the various ‘runs’ of Marshallian time.” 16 Plans can be<br />
said to be “coordinated” in the PSR, in the limited sense of coordination<br />
just mentioned, without being “coordinated” in any broader sense, as in<br />
a longer period of time, a larger set of potential traders or bundles of<br />
goods. As O’Driscoll <strong>and</strong> Rizzo (1985, pp. 80–81) put it: “Hayekian<br />
equilibrium therefore must entail homogenous expectations with respect<br />
to the time period within which equilibrium prevails. Outside of that<br />
period, however, expectations can, <strong>and</strong> sometimes must, be divergent.”<br />
ey go on to conclude that Hayekian equilibrium, in any form, cannot be<br />
obtained in real exchange. “Hayek <strong>and</strong> the other Austrians did not realize<br />
that equilibrium is not a directly operational construct <strong>and</strong> that the real<br />
world was never in equilibrium” (p. 81). is is clearly false, however, with<br />
respect to the PSR (<strong>and</strong>, to a weaker extent, the WSR), when expressed in<br />
“plan coordination” terms.<br />
Rothbard (1962) is somewhat imprecise in distinguishing among equilibrium<br />
constructs. His discussion of price determination (pp. 79–186,<br />
<strong>and</strong> passim) focuses mainly on PSR prices, though he occasionally refers to<br />
prices that “tend toward” their (WSR) equilibrium values. As described<br />
above, every price paid in an actual transaction is a PSR price, so the<br />
concept of a market price tending toward its PSR value makes little sense.<br />
PSR prices can, of course, be what the Walrasian literature calls “false<br />
prices,” meaning that they differ from their WSR or FSR values.<br />
In his treatment of expectations Rothbard (1962, pp. 130–37) notes<br />
that the formation of PSR prices does not assume perfect knowledge. Indeed,<br />
the supply <strong>and</strong> dem<strong>and</strong> curves underlying PSR analysis incorporate<br />
market participants’ expectations of future price changes, expectations that<br />
may or may not be consistent with those of other market participants. If<br />
expectations are incorrect, then shortages <strong>and</strong> surpluses emerge as market<br />
participants trade at PSR prices—Rothbard (1962, p. 134) calls them<br />
“provisional resting point[s]”—that differ from their values once these<br />
price differences have been arbitraged away (a state of affairs presumably<br />
like the WSR, though Rothbard is not explicit on this point). As these<br />
shortages <strong>and</strong> surpluses are revealed, market participants will adjust their<br />
16 Kirzner (2000) argues for a more nuanced appreciation of Hayek’s commitment to<br />
“plan coordination,” arguing (against O’Driscoll, 1977) that Hayek was ambivalent on the<br />
proper notion of coordination in economics. For more on concepts of coordination see<br />
Klein (1997) <strong>and</strong> Klein <strong>and</strong> Orsborn (2009).
142 <br />
expectations until the fully arbitraged price, what Rothbard here calls the<br />
“genuine equilibrium price,” emerges. Rothbard does, then, assume a<br />
simple learning process, though he does not spell out the details of this<br />
process. However, his assumptions about knowledge <strong>and</strong> the ability of<br />
market participants to learn from their mistakes (“speculative errors”) are<br />
minimal. Market participants are assumed to adjust their expectations<br />
about the PSR prices that emerge moment-to-moment, in the markets<br />
in which these traders are active. In other words, these are very short-run<br />
expectations, not long-run expectations (in the Marshallian sense of the<br />
long run).<br />
Likewise, the Austrian price theory of Böhm-Bawerk, Wicksteed, Fetter,<br />
Mises, <strong>and</strong> Rothbard treats the movement of prices from PSR to WSR<br />
values as a straightforward process. It does not require “perfect knowledge,”<br />
only that agents are aware of surpluses <strong>and</strong> shortages (from trading<br />
at false prices) <strong>and</strong> that they adjust their bids accordingly. As noted above,<br />
agents’ expectations about other agents’ preferences are already incorporated<br />
into the reservation bids <strong>and</strong> asks. While these writers were not as<br />
explicit about their assumptions concerning knowledge <strong>and</strong> expectations<br />
as Mayer (1932), Hayek (1937, 1945) <strong>and</strong> the later Austrians, they were<br />
hardly unaware of processes underlying market clearing. Wicksteed, for<br />
example, is explicit that forecast errors explain the deviation of PSR prices<br />
(the “actual price”) from their WSR equivalents (the “ideal price”):<br />
A market is the machinery by which those on whose scales of preference<br />
any commodity is relatively high are brought into communication<br />
with those on whose scales it is relatively low, in order that<br />
exchanges may take place to mutual satisfaction until equilibrium<br />
is established. But this process will always <strong>and</strong> necessarily occupy<br />
time. e persons potentially constituting the market will not all<br />
be present at the same time, <strong>and</strong> therefore the composition of the<br />
collective scale (on which, together with the total amount of the<br />
commodity in existence, the ideal point of equilibrium depends)<br />
must be a matter of estimate <strong>and</strong> conjecture. e transactions actually<br />
conducted at any moment will be determined in relation to the<br />
anticipated possibilities of transactions at other moments. Speculation<br />
as to these fixture possibilities will be more or less elaborate<br />
<strong>and</strong> conscious according to the nature of the market <strong>and</strong> the length<br />
of time over which the adjustment will be likely to extend. But<br />
speculation is always present when any possessor of the commodity<br />
refuses to sell at the moment at a price which he knows he will be
143<br />
prepared to accept ultimately (whether an hour or eleven months<br />
hence), if satisfied that he can do no better; or if any purchaser<br />
refuses at the moment to give a price to which he knows he will<br />
ultimately be willing to rise should the alternative be to go without<br />
the commodity; or if any one buys at a price below which he<br />
would ultimately sell sooner than keep the stock for his own use.<br />
(Wicksteed, 1910, p. 236)<br />
ese forecast errors are revealed, Wicksteed (1910, p. 236) continues, as<br />
traders exchange at non-WSR prices in real time:<br />
If no one at first has a correct conception of the facts, a series of<br />
tentative estimates, <strong>and</strong> the observation of the transactions that<br />
take place under their influence, may gradually reveal them; <strong>and</strong> if<br />
we could eliminate all error from speculative estimates <strong>and</strong> could<br />
reduce derivative preferences to exact correspondence with the<br />
primary preferences which they represent, <strong>and</strong> on which they are<br />
based, the actual price would always correspond with the ideal<br />
price.<br />
Salerno (1994a, p. 105) notes that Mises, in e eory of Money <strong>and</strong><br />
Credit, invokes arbitrage in his account of purchasing power parity (Mises,<br />
1912, pp. 195–203). “e money price of any commodity in any place,<br />
under the assumption of completely unrestricted exchange <strong>and</strong> disregarding<br />
the differences arising from the time taken in transit, must be the same<br />
as the price at any other place, augmented or diminished by the money<br />
cost of transport” (Mises, 1912, pp. 196–97). Hence, Mises argues,<br />
the purchasing power of money shows a tendency to come to the<br />
same level throughout the world, <strong>and</strong> that the alleged differences<br />
in it are almost entirely explicable by differences in the quality of the<br />
commodities offered <strong>and</strong> dem<strong>and</strong>ed, so that there is only a small <strong>and</strong><br />
almost negligible remainder left over, that is due to differences in<br />
the quality of the offered <strong>and</strong> dem<strong>and</strong>ed money.<br />
e existence of the tendency itself is hardly questioned.<br />
(p. 198; emphasis in original)<br />
Mises continues:<br />
Nobody would wish to dispute the fact that costs of production<br />
differ greatly from one another in different localities. But it must be<br />
denied that this exercises an influence on the price of commodities<br />
<strong>and</strong> on the purchasing power of money. e contrary follows too
144 <br />
clearly from the principles of the theory of prices, <strong>and</strong> is too clearly<br />
demonstrated day by day in the market, to need any special proof<br />
in addition. e consumer who seeks the cheapest supply <strong>and</strong> the<br />
producer who seeks the most paying sale concur in the endeavor<br />
to liberate prices from the limitations of the local market. (Mises,<br />
1912, pp. 199–200)<br />
Note that Mises treats the “tendency” of the purchasing power of money<br />
to equalize across <strong>and</strong> within markets, less transportation costs, as “clearly<br />
demonstrated day by day in the market,” i.e., as an empirical fact not<br />
requiring special explanation.<br />
Here it is worth emphasizing a methodological point. For modern,<br />
neoclassical economists, the instrumentalist approach (Friedman,<br />
1953) renders moot many such questions about the mechanics underlying<br />
market-clearing processes. e goal of economic theory, in this approach,<br />
is not to explain actual prices, but to explain hypothetical prices (for example,<br />
full-information prices, Nash equilibrium prices, perfectly competitive<br />
prices, <strong>and</strong> the like). It is unlikely that Menger <strong>and</strong> his followers, steeped<br />
in the causal-realist tradition, would simply assume that “equilibrium”<br />
obtains—after all, they were seeking to explain real prices, not hypothetical<br />
ones. ey saw the processes of buyers <strong>and</strong> sellers making bids <strong>and</strong> asks,<br />
of revising their offers in light of new information, <strong>and</strong> so on as real-world<br />
phenomena, not instrumental constructs like the Walrasian tâtonnement. 17<br />
Lachmann (1977, p. 189), while expressing reservations about the log-<br />
17 De Vroey (2002, pp. 406–07) argues that Marshall, too, regarded his market-day<br />
equilibrium construct as both realistic <strong>and</strong> practical, i.e., not requiring an underlying<br />
adjustment process:<br />
Two adjustment processes are present in Marshall: the adjustment toward<br />
market-day equilibrium <strong>and</strong> the adjustment toward normal equilibrium.<br />
In my view . .. the former should be interpreted as proceeding instantaneously,<br />
whereas the latter (to be called intertemporal adjustment) arises<br />
across several trading rounds....<br />
e stationary equilibrium concept of equilibrium is in accord with<br />
the common-sense underst<strong>and</strong>ing of equilibrium—i.e., it is a point of<br />
rest. It is implied that this point does not need to be effectively reached;<br />
it suffices that reacting forces are triggered whenever it is not reached.<br />
Equilibrium is thus viewed as an attractor.... Note also that in this line of<br />
thought, assessing the existence of equilibrium or disequilibrium amounts<br />
to making a statement about reality.
145<br />
ical consistency of market-level equilibrium constructs such as the WSR,<br />
nonetheless recognized that Menger’s points of rest, Böhm-Bawerk’s momentary<br />
equilibrium, <strong>and</strong> Mises’s plain state of rest represent real phenomena:<br />
e Austrians were concerned, in the first place, with the individual<br />
in household <strong>and</strong> business. ere is no doubt that here equilibrium<br />
has a clear meaning <strong>and</strong> real significance. Men really aim at<br />
bringing their various actions into consistency. Here a tendency<br />
towards equilibrium is not only a necessary concept of praxeology,<br />
but also a fact of experience. It is part of the logic inherent in human<br />
action. Interindividual equilibrium, such as that on a simple<br />
market, like Böhm-Bawerk’s horse market, already raises problems<br />
but still makes sense. “Equilibrium of an industry” à la Marshall is<br />
already more precarious. “Equilibrium of the economic system as<br />
a whole,” as Walras <strong>and</strong> Pareto conceived of it, is certainly open to<br />
Mises’s [anti-equilibrium] strictures.<br />
In other words, the deliberately unrealistic character of the equilibrium<br />
constructs that dominate neoclassical economics—<strong>and</strong>, by implication,<br />
Austrian concepts like the FSR <strong>and</strong> ERE—does not render the equilibrium<br />
concept itself unrealistic.<br />
Clearly, the Mengerian price theorists did not assume that real prices<br />
were FSR or ERE prices. ey allowed for subjective, heterogeneous beliefs<br />
about changes in dem<strong>and</strong>, resource availability, <strong>and</strong> knowledge. And Mises<br />
(1949, p. 247) is clear that the movement from the PSR to the FSR takes<br />
place in analytical time, not calendar time. “Between the appearance of a<br />
new datum <strong>and</strong> the perfect adjustment of the market to it some time must<br />
pass. (And, of course, while this period of time elapses, other new data<br />
appear.)” In other words, the real economy does not converge on a FSR<br />
because as the market is adjusting to one change in the data, another takes<br />
place, the combined effects of which cannot be known ex ante. Hence the<br />
accuracy of real-world expectations is not central to this approach. ese<br />
theorists make no assumptions about the tendency or PSR <strong>and</strong> WSR prices<br />
to converge toward some “final” values.<br />
What about “radical uncertainty”? One can perhaps imagine a market<br />
in which PSR prices do not “converge” toward WSR prices because of<br />
endogenous, subjective expectations. However, as discussed above, it is<br />
not clear that such a case has much practical significance, because the
146 <br />
movement from the PSR to the WSR requires only modest assumptions<br />
about knowledge (namely, the ability of market participants to learn from<br />
their mistakes). Even in the simplest, pure-exchange economy, Mengerian<br />
price theory allows traders to have subjective expectations relevant to that<br />
particular market (i.e., beliefs about other traders’ preferences), expectations<br />
that are incorporated into the PSR supply <strong>and</strong> dem<strong>and</strong> curves.<br />
Vaughn (1994, p. 91) argues that much stronger assumptions about<br />
knowledge <strong>and</strong> expectations are necessary for economic analysis, even (presumably)<br />
for Mengerian price theory:<br />
If all action is speculation, if people are constantly reevaluating<br />
their preferences, if <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s make losses as well as profits, can<br />
we be so certain that markets are fundamentally orderly? Perhaps<br />
our world is one in which individual rationality leads to overall<br />
waste <strong>and</strong> error.... Even more to the point, in a world of constant<br />
change, how can people’s plans come to be realized? Why are<br />
speculators likely to be more right about <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial prospects<br />
than the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s themselves? And how is successful rational<br />
action distinguishable from pure luck? What are the regularities<br />
in economic life that can be counted on to lend stability <strong>and</strong> predictability<br />
to an otherwise bewildering world?<br />
Most likely Menger, Böhm-Bawerk, Wieser, Mises, <strong>and</strong> their Viennese<br />
contemporaries would have been baffled by the last statement in the<br />
quotation above. e science of economics, in Menger’s formulation, is<br />
about the explanation of regularities—the “exact laws” of reality described<br />
in the Investigations. As Menger wrote to Walras in 1884:<br />
It is rather necessary that we go back to the most simple elements<br />
of the mostly very complex phenomena that are here in question—that<br />
we thus determine in an analytical manner the ultimate<br />
factors that constitute the phenomena, the prices, <strong>and</strong> that we<br />
then accord to these elements the importance that corresponds to<br />
their nature, <strong>and</strong> that, in keeping with this importance, we try to<br />
establish the laws according to which the complex phenomena of<br />
human interaction result from simple phenomena. (Quoted in<br />
Hülsmann, 2007, p. 106)<br />
As Bastiat (1850) observed, Paris gets fed. e task of economics is to<br />
explain why.
147<br />
e early Austrians’ emphasis on order helps us underst<strong>and</strong> Mises’s<br />
<strong>and</strong> Hayek’s statements, quoted at the beginning of the chapter, about the<br />
close relationship between Austrian <strong>and</strong> neoclassical economics. Menger,<br />
Walras, <strong>and</strong> Jevons all sought to explain the regularities of economic life.<br />
e historicists, by contrast, saw the economy as a chaotic flood that defied<br />
rational explanation. Indeed, some contemporary interpretations of Austrian<br />
economics seem to place it closer to the German Historical School<br />
than the Austrian School. Vaughn (1994, p. 90) for example, writes of<br />
Mises:<br />
[W]hat about sources of discoordination <strong>and</strong> disorder in [free, unhampered]<br />
markets? Mises really had very little to say about such<br />
problems, <strong>and</strong> in fact one concludes that he thought disorder was<br />
a relatively minor problem.... [T]he only obvious sources of instability<br />
or disorder in his system were the consequences of bad<br />
banking institutions <strong>and</strong> destabilizing intervention on the part of<br />
government. Trade cycles were brought about by misguided credit<br />
policies. Unemployment was a consequence of minimum wage<br />
rates. Inflation was an increase in the quantity of money brought<br />
about by government policy. Externalities were the consequence of<br />
imperfectly specified property rights. He never considered possible<br />
sources of disorder internal to the market; disorder was an exogenous<br />
phenomenon brought about by government regulation. . . .<br />
In this attitude ... Mises is really not very different from many<br />
neoclassical economic theorists (although perhaps more consistent<br />
<strong>and</strong> more outspoken than others who shared his basic evaluation<br />
of the market).<br />
I think Vaughn is correct that Mises thought “disorder,” in the sense<br />
she describes above, was a “relatively minor problem.” For Mises, economic<br />
theory is the analysis of coordination—not the idea of “plan coordination”<br />
often associated with Hayek, or what O’Driscoll <strong>and</strong> Rizzo (1985) call<br />
“pattern coordination,” but what Mises, following W. H. Hutt, described<br />
as “price coordination” (Salerno, 1991). is coordination, as noted below<br />
does not require any assumptions about the tendency of PSR or WSR<br />
prices to converge to FSR values. Full coordination of plans occurs only<br />
in the ERE, a hypothetical state of affairs that does not (indeed, could<br />
not) occur in the real economy. For Mises, following Clark (1899), the<br />
FSR is an analytical device used to isolate the effects of specific changes in<br />
preferences, beliefs, resource availability, productive technology, <strong>and</strong> the
148 <br />
like on the allocation of resources. 18<br />
What does Mises mean by coordination, outside an imaginary world<br />
of perfect knowledge, consistent expectations, “rational” behavior, <strong>and</strong> the<br />
other assumptions of the First <strong>and</strong> Second Welfare eorems of neoclassical<br />
economics? How, in other words, can Mises justify the efficiency of<br />
resource allocation under capitalism without making strong assumptions<br />
about the closeness of real-world prices to some idealized, or “correct,”<br />
prices?<br />
Central to the neoclassical notion of efficiency is the idea that only FSR<br />
prices count for assessing the welfare properties of the market. 19 A primary<br />
objective of Kirzner’s account of the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial market process is to<br />
show that the movement from PSR prices to their Marshallian/Walrasian<br />
FSR equivalents is not automatic <strong>and</strong> instantaneous, but the result of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial<br />
behavior. In Kirzner’s framework, the market does possess equilibrating<br />
tendencies, but these tendencies are not exogenous, but result<br />
from the actions of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s alert to the profit opportunities created<br />
by temporary trading at false, i.e., non-FSR, prices. For Kirzner, PSR<br />
prices themselves are not particularly important; what matters is whether<br />
they tend to converge toward their FSR values. Kirzner’s concept of alertness<br />
can thus be seen as an addendum to the neoclassical underst<strong>and</strong>ing of<br />
market equilibrium. Kirzner’s approach, as Boettke <strong>and</strong> Prychitko (1994,<br />
p. 3) describe it, “provided the disequilibrium foundations of equilibrium<br />
economics that were required to complete the neoclassical project of explicating<br />
the operating principles of the price system.” Kirzner’s objective,<br />
in this sense, is to justify the use of FSR, or near-FSR, prices in welfare<br />
analysis. If the market possesses equilibrating tendencies, then the welfare<br />
theorems of neoclassical economics are reasonable criteria for assessing<br />
market performance, <strong>and</strong> the main talk of welfare economics should be<br />
the analysis of these tendencies <strong>and</strong> of market interventions that inhibit<br />
the process of equilibration (Kirzner, 1988b). 20<br />
18 Note that Clark (1907, p. 96) describes simple FSR analysis or comparative statics—e.g.,<br />
if the supply increases, the price will fall, ceteris paribus—as obvious, as what<br />
he calls a “commercial fact.”<br />
19 And these FSR prices are only “efficient” in perfectly competitive markets; any degree<br />
of asymmetric information renders economic outcomes inefficient (Grossman, 1980).<br />
20 Adds Boettke (2005):<br />
Why is all this important? Well as Franklin Fischer pointed out in his very
149<br />
Salerno (1991, 1999b) offers a different interpretation of Mises, arguing<br />
that Mengerian price theory is primarily a theory of PSR prices, not<br />
FSR prices. In this view, the existence or nonexistence of equilibrating<br />
tendencies in the unhampered market—the issue that divided “Kirznerians”<br />
<strong>and</strong> “Lachmannians,” <strong>and</strong> dominated much of the Austrian discussion<br />
in the 1980s—is relatively unimportant. For Mises, the critical “market<br />
process” is not the convergence to equilibrium, but the selection mechanism<br />
in which unsuccessful <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s—those who systematically overbid<br />
for factors, relative to eventual consumer dem<strong>and</strong>s—are eliminated<br />
from the market (Mises, 1951). In this context, the recent debate over<br />
“de-homogenizing” Mises <strong>and</strong> Hayek (Rothbard, 1991; Salerno, 1993,<br />
1994b, 1996b; Yeager, 1994, 1995, 1997; Herbener, 1996; Hoppe, 1996;<br />
Stalebrink, 2004) deals not simply with the socialist calculation debate<br />
or second-order distinctions between “calculation” <strong>and</strong> “knowledge,” but<br />
with a fundamentally new interpretation of Austrian price theory, a causalrealist<br />
approach to the market that differs in important ways from the Marshallian/Walrasian<br />
analysis that fills the contemporary textbooks. Austrian<br />
economics, in this view, is not simply neoclassical microeconomics—what<br />
Caldwell (2004, pp. 328–88) calls “basic economic reasoning”—plus the<br />
Mises–Hayek theory of the business cycle plus knowledge, process, plan<br />
coordination, <strong>and</strong> spontaneous order, but a fundamentally different kind<br />
of microeconomics. 21<br />
important book e Disequilibrium Foundations of Equilibrium Economics<br />
(1983) that unless we have good reasons to believe in the systemic tendency<br />
toward equilibrium we have no justification at all in upholding the welfare<br />
properties of equilibrium economics. In other words, without the sort<br />
of explanation that Kirzner provides the entire enterprise of neoclassical<br />
equilibrium is little more than a leap of faith.<br />
If one rejects the neoclassical equilibrium concept as a welfare benchmark,<br />
though, this justification is unnecessary.<br />
21 Caldwell (2004, p. 333) argues that Austrians accept “the simple (although unrealistic)<br />
models used for basic economic reasoning,” such as supply-<strong>and</strong>-dem<strong>and</strong> analysis, at least<br />
for market-level predictions. But Menger’s analysis, while “abstract,” is not “unrealistic”<br />
in the sense of Walras’s or Marshall’s models of market exchange. In Long’s (2006) terminology,<br />
Austrians reject “precisive abstraction,” in which false assumptions are deliberately<br />
included to simplify the analysis, while embracing “non-precisive abstraction,” in which<br />
certain characteristics of the situation are simply not specified. In other words, the “basic<br />
economic reasoning” of the Austrians is different from the basic economic reasoning of<br />
neoclassical economics.
150 <br />
In a recent response to Salerno, Kirzner (1999) takes a characteristically<br />
subtle position on the relationship between PSR <strong>and</strong> FSR prices. He argues<br />
the PSR is an “equilibrium” only in a trivial sense <strong>and</strong> that PSR prices are<br />
not meaningful for assessing the welfare properties of markets. He also<br />
recognizes that PSR analysis was important to Mises. To solve this seeming<br />
contradiction, he says that Mises used the PSR only to defend the concept<br />
of consumer sovereignty, not for analysis of the market process. However,<br />
if PSR prices are sufficient to assure that production is satisfying consumer<br />
wants, it is unclear why FSR prices are important, <strong>and</strong> why one would care<br />
about the alleged tendency of PSR prices to reach them.<br />
A New Way Forward for Austrian Economics: Developing Austrian<br />
Price Theory<br />
e main argument of this chapter is that Austrian economics is primarily<br />
mundane economics—the theory <strong>and</strong> applications of value, production,<br />
exchange, price, capital, money, the firm, regulation, comparative institutions,<br />
<strong>and</strong> other “mainstream” topics. What makes Austrian economics<br />
unique is its causal-realist approach to these issues, not its attention to adjustment<br />
processes, the formation of knowledge <strong>and</strong> expectations, spontaneous<br />
order, plan or pattern coordination, radical subjectivism, <strong>and</strong> other<br />
manifestations of “disequilibrium” economics. Such issues are interesting<br />
<strong>and</strong> potentially important, but are ultimately subordinate to the main task<br />
of economic analysis, the development, extension, application, <strong>and</strong> refinement<br />
of the mundane Austrian tradition established by Menger. Naturally,<br />
this means that students of Austrian economics must invest significant time<br />
in mastering the existing literature before engaging in their own creative<br />
restatement <strong>and</strong> revision.<br />
As noted in chapters 4 <strong>and</strong> 5, Austrian economics is attracting increasing<br />
attention among applied researchers in strategic management, organizational<br />
economics, <strong>and</strong> the theory of the firm. Often the value-added of<br />
Austrian economics in these fields is seen as its emphasis on disequilibrium,<br />
which seems to fit the profit-seeking approach of strategic management<br />
better than do neoclassical partial- <strong>and</strong> general-equilibrium models. Here<br />
a more sophisticated <strong>and</strong> nuanced underst<strong>and</strong>ing of equilibrium would be<br />
helpful, however. Organizational structures that are implemented, contracts<br />
that are signed <strong>and</strong> executed, <strong>and</strong> other business arrangements that
151<br />
take place in real markets are equilibrium phenomena, in the PSR sense of<br />
equilibrium. ey should be explainable using the same causal-realistic<br />
mechanism used by the Austrians to explain real prices <strong>and</strong> quantities.<br />
FSR analysis, as practiced by Mises, should also apply here: how, for instance,<br />
does the profit-<strong>and</strong>-loss mechanism provide incentives for agents to<br />
restructure PSR arrangements so that they move toward their FSR equivalents?<br />
How do changes in regulation or other aspects of public policy,<br />
or exogenous changes in the competitive or technological environments,<br />
replace one PSR with another?<br />
Unfortunately, despite the pleas of modern Austrians for more analysis<br />
of “process,” very little progress has been made in this area within<br />
the Austrian literature. Indeed, the bulk of the work during the last few<br />
decades in evolutionary economics, dynamic programming, evolutionary<br />
game theory, Bayesian learning models, agent-based simulations, complexity<br />
theory, <strong>and</strong> so on, is fundamentally acausal <strong>and</strong> nonrealistic, an<br />
extension of the mathematical economics of the late nineteenth <strong>and</strong> early<br />
twentieth centuries. O’Driscoll <strong>and</strong> Rizzo (1985, pp. 65–66) cite some<br />
examples of these literatures, implying that they are “Hayekian” in spirit;<br />
however, despite sharing certain keywords with Austrian economics, it is<br />
unclear that these research programs have been influenced in any way by<br />
the core contributions or approach of the Austrian School.<br />
Of course, the argument here is not that knowledge, expectations, <strong>and</strong><br />
process are unimportant, or that they should be ignored by Austrians (or<br />
by any social scientists), but that they are secondary, <strong>and</strong> valuable only<br />
to the extent they help construct a more satisfactory theory of markets<br />
<strong>and</strong> prices. Austrian economics emerged as a causal, realistic alternative<br />
to the historicism of its day, <strong>and</strong> remains today an alternative both to<br />
mechanistic neoclassical economics <strong>and</strong> to the non-economics of old-style<br />
institutionalism. Without a commitment to preserving <strong>and</strong> extending the<br />
hard core of Austrian price theory, the distinct place of the Austrian School<br />
will be lost.
CHAPTER 8<br />
Commentary<br />
A<br />
Government Did Invent the Internet, But the Market Made<br />
it Glorious †<br />
Libertarians often cite the Internet as a case in point that liberty is the<br />
mother of innovation. Opponents quickly counter that the Internet was a<br />
government program, proving once again that markets must be guided by<br />
the steady h<strong>and</strong> of the state. In one sense, the critics are correct, though<br />
not in ways they underst<strong>and</strong>.<br />
e Internet indeed began as a typical government program, the<br />
ARPANET, designed to share mainframe computing power <strong>and</strong> to establish<br />
a secure military communications network. Of course, the designers<br />
could not have foreseen what the (commercial) Internet has become. Still,<br />
this reality has important implications for how the Internet works—<strong>and</strong><br />
explains why there are so many roadblocks in the continued development<br />
of online technologies. It is only thanks to market participants that the<br />
Internet became something other than a typical government program,<br />
characterized by inefficiency, overcapitalization, <strong>and</strong> irrelevance.<br />
In fact, the role of the government in the creation of the Internet is<br />
† Published originally on Mises.org, June 12, 2006.<br />
153
154 <br />
often understated. e Internet owes its very existence to the state <strong>and</strong> to<br />
state funding. e story begins with ARPA, created in 1957 in response<br />
to the Soviets’ launch of Sputnik, <strong>and</strong> established to research the efficient<br />
use of computers for civilian <strong>and</strong> military applications.<br />
During the 1960s, the RAND Corporation had begun to think about<br />
how to design a military communications network that would be invulnerable<br />
to a nuclear attack. Paul Baran, a RAND researcher whose work was<br />
financed by the Air Force, produced a classified report in 1964 proposing<br />
a radical solution to this communication problem. Baran envisioned a<br />
decentralized network of different types of “host” computers, without any<br />
central switchboard, designed to operate even if parts of it were destroyed.<br />
e network would consist of several “nodes,” each equal in authority, each<br />
capable of sending <strong>and</strong> receiving pieces of data.<br />
Each data fragment could thus travel one of several routes to its destination,<br />
such that no one part of the network would be completely dependent<br />
on the existence of another part. An experimental network of<br />
this type, funded by ARPA <strong>and</strong> thus known as ARPANET, was established<br />
at four universities in 1969. Researchers at any one of the four<br />
nodes could share information, <strong>and</strong> could operate any one of the other<br />
machines remotely, over the new network. (Actually, former ARPA head<br />
Charles Herzfeld says that distributing computing power over a network,<br />
rather than creating a secure military comm<strong>and</strong>-<strong>and</strong>-control system, was<br />
the ARPANET’s original goal, though this is a minority view.)<br />
By 1972, the number of host computers connected to the ARPANET<br />
had increased to 37. Because it was so easy to send <strong>and</strong> retrieve data, within<br />
a few years the ARPANET became less a network for shared computing<br />
than what has been called “a high-speed, federally subsidized, electronic<br />
post office.” e main traffic on the ARPANET did not consist of longdistance<br />
computing, but news <strong>and</strong> personal messages.<br />
As parts of the ARPANET were declassified, commercial networks<br />
began to be connected to it. Any type of computer using a particular<br />
communications st<strong>and</strong>ard, or “protocol,” was capable of sending <strong>and</strong> receiving<br />
information across the network. e design of these protocols was<br />
contracted out to private universities such as Stanford <strong>and</strong> the University of<br />
London, <strong>and</strong> was financed by a variety of federal agencies. e major thoroughfares<br />
or “trunk lines” continued to be financed by the Department of<br />
Defense. By the early 1980s, private use of the ARPA communications
155<br />
protocol—what is now called “TCP/IP”—far exceeded military use. In<br />
1984 the National Science Foundation assumed the responsibility of building<br />
<strong>and</strong> maintaining the trunk lines or “backbones.” (ARPANET formally<br />
expired in 1989; by that time hardly anybody noticed). e NSF’s Office<br />
of Advanced Computing financed the Internet’s infrastructure from 1984<br />
until 1994, when the backbones were privatized.<br />
In short, both the design <strong>and</strong> implementation of the Internet have<br />
relied almost exclusively on government dollars. e fact that its designers<br />
envisioned a packet-switching network has serious implications for how<br />
the Internet actually works. For example, packet switching is a great technology<br />
for file transfers, email, <strong>and</strong> web browsing but not necessarily the<br />
best for real-time applications like video <strong>and</strong> audio feeds, <strong>and</strong>, to a lesser<br />
extent, server-based applications.<br />
Furthermore, without any mechanism for pricing individual packets,<br />
the network is overused, like any public good. Every packet is assigned an<br />
equal priority. A packet containing a surgeon’s diagnosis of an emergency<br />
medical procedure has exactly the same chance of getting through as a<br />
packet containing part of a pop star’s latest single or an online gamer’s<br />
instruction to smite his foe. Because the sender’s marginal cost of each<br />
transmission is effectively zero, the network is overused, <strong>and</strong> often congested.<br />
Like any essentially unowned resource, an open-ended packetswitching<br />
network suffers from what Garrett Hardin famously called the<br />
“Tragedy of the Commons.”<br />
In no sense can we say that packet-switching is the “right” technology.<br />
One of my favorite quotes on this subject comes from Michael Hauben<br />
<strong>and</strong> Ronda Hauben’s Netizens: On the History <strong>and</strong> Impact of Usenet <strong>and</strong> the<br />
Internet (1995):<br />
e current global computer network has been developed by scientists<br />
<strong>and</strong> researchers <strong>and</strong> users who were free of market forces.<br />
Because of the government oversight <strong>and</strong> subsidy of network development,<br />
these network pioneers were not under the time pressures<br />
or bottom-line restraints that dominate commercial ventures.<br />
erefore, they could contribute the time <strong>and</strong> labor needed to make<br />
sure the problems were solved. And most were doing so to contribute<br />
to the networking community.<br />
In other words, the designers of the Internet were “free” from the constraint<br />
that whatever they produced had to satisfy consumer wants.
156 <br />
We must be very careful not to describe the Internet as a “private”<br />
technology, a spontaneous order, or a shining example of <strong>capitalist</strong>ic ingenuity.<br />
It is none of these. Of course, almost all of the Internet’s current<br />
applications—unforeseen by its original designers—have been developed<br />
in the private sector. (Unfortunately, the original web <strong>and</strong> the web browser<br />
are not among them, having been designed by the state-funded European<br />
Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) <strong>and</strong> the University of Illinois’s<br />
NCSA.) And today’s Internet would be impossible without the heroic efforts<br />
at Xerox PARC <strong>and</strong> Apple to develop a useable graphical user interface<br />
(GUI), a lightweight <strong>and</strong> durable mouse, <strong>and</strong> the Ethernet protocol. Still,<br />
none of these would have been viable without the huge investment of<br />
public dollars that brought the network into existence in the first place.<br />
Now, it is easy to admire the technology of the Internet. I marvel at<br />
it every day. But technological value is not the same as economic value.<br />
at can only be determined by the free choice of consumers to buy or<br />
not to buy. e ARPANET may well have been technologically superior<br />
to any commercial networks that existed at the time, just as Betamax may<br />
have been technologically superior to VHS, the MacOS to MS-DOS, <strong>and</strong><br />
Dvorak to QWERTY. (Actually Dvorak wasn’t.) But the products <strong>and</strong><br />
features valued by engineers are not always the same as those valued by<br />
consumers. Markets select for economic superiority, not technological<br />
superiority (even in the presence of nefarious “network effects,” as shown<br />
convincingly by Liebowitz <strong>and</strong> Margolis, 1990, 1995, 1999).<br />
Libertarian Internet enthusiasts tend to forget the fallacy of the broken<br />
window. We see the Internet. We see its uses. We see the benefits it brings.<br />
We surf the web <strong>and</strong> check our email <strong>and</strong> download our music. But we will<br />
never see the technologies that weren’t developed because the resources that<br />
would have been used to develop them were confiscated by the Defense<br />
Department <strong>and</strong> given to Stanford engineers. Likewise, I may admire the<br />
majesty <strong>and</strong> gr<strong>and</strong>eur of an Egyptian pyramid, a TVA dam, or a Saturn V<br />
rocket, but it doesn’t follow that I think they should have been created, let<br />
alone at taxpayer expense.<br />
What kind of global computer network would the market have selected?<br />
We can only guess. Maybe it would be more like the commercial<br />
online networks such as Comcast or MSN, or the private bulletin boards<br />
of the 1980s. Most likely, it would use some kind of pricing schedule,<br />
where different charges would be assessed for different types of transmis-
157<br />
sions. Unfortunately, the whole idea of pricing the Internet as a scarce<br />
resource—though we usually don’t notice this, b<strong>and</strong>width is scarce given<br />
current technology—is ignored in most proposals to legislate network neutrality,<br />
a form of “network socialism” that can only stymie the Internet’s<br />
continued growth <strong>and</strong> development. e net neutrality debate takes place<br />
in the shadow of government intervention. So too the debate over the<br />
division of the spectrum for wireless transmission. Any resource the government<br />
controls will be allocated based on political priorities.<br />
Let us conclude: yes, the government was the founder of the Internet.<br />
As a result, we are left with a panoply of lingering inefficiencies, misallocations,<br />
abuses, <strong>and</strong> political favoritism. In other words, government<br />
involvement accounts for the Internet’s continuing problems, while the<br />
market should get the credit for its glories.<br />
<br />
B Networks, Social Production, <strong>and</strong> Private Property †<br />
Yochai Benkler’s e Wealth of Networks is a comprehensive, informative,<br />
<strong>and</strong> challenging meditation on the rise of the “networked information<br />
economy” <strong>and</strong> its implications for society, politics, <strong>and</strong> culture. Benkler<br />
is a leading authority on the law, economics, <strong>and</strong> politics of networks,<br />
innovation, intellectual property, <strong>and</strong> the Internet, <strong>and</strong> he puts his wide<br />
knowledge <strong>and</strong> deep underst<strong>and</strong>ing to good use. He argues that the digital<br />
revolution is more revolutionary than has been recognized, even by its<br />
most passionate defenders. e new information <strong>and</strong> communications<br />
technologies do not simply make the old ways of doing things more efficient,<br />
but also support fundamentally new ways of doing things. In<br />
particular, the past few years have seen the rise of social production, a<br />
radically decentralized, distributed mode of interaction that Benkler calls<br />
“commons-based peer production.”<br />
Peer production involves the creation <strong>and</strong> dissemination of “user-generated<br />
content,” including Wikipedia <strong>and</strong> open-source software, such as<br />
† Published originally as a review of Yochai Benkler, e Wealth of Networks: How Social<br />
Production Transforms Markets <strong>and</strong> Freedom, reviewed in e Independent Review 13, no. 3<br />
(Winter 2009).
158 <br />
Linux, that allow users to generate their own entries <strong>and</strong> modify those created<br />
by others. Commons-based peer production is characterized by weak<br />
property rights, an emphasis on intrinsic rather than extrinsic (monetary)<br />
rewards, <strong>and</strong> the exploitation of dispersed, tacit knowledge. (Some readers<br />
will immediately think of Hayek’s concept of the market as generator <strong>and</strong><br />
transmitter of knowledge, though Hayek does not figure prominently in<br />
the book.)<br />
e Wealth of Networks is divided into three main parts. e first deals<br />
with the economics of the networked information economy. is is welltrod<br />
ground, having been explored in detail in Shapiro <strong>and</strong> Varian (1998),<br />
Liebowitz <strong>and</strong> Margolis (1999), <strong>and</strong> other works, but Benkler’s treatment<br />
is nevertheless insightful, intelligent, <strong>and</strong> engaging. e characteristics<br />
of information as an economic good—high fixed costs <strong>and</strong> low marginal<br />
costs; the ability to be consumed without exhaustion; the difficulty of<br />
excluding “free-riders”—support the widespread use of commons-based<br />
peer production.<br />
Benkler proposes social production as an alternative to the traditional<br />
organizational modes of market <strong>and</strong> hierarchy, in Oliver Williamson’s terminology.<br />
Indeed, open-source production differs in important ways from<br />
spot-market interaction <strong>and</strong> production within the private firm. But here,<br />
as elsewhere, Benkler tends to overstate the novelty of social production.<br />
Firms, for example, have long employed internal markets; delegated decision<br />
rights throughout the organization; formed themselves into networks,<br />
clusters, <strong>and</strong> alliances; <strong>and</strong> otherwise taken advantage of openness <strong>and</strong><br />
collaboration. Many different organizational forms proliferate within the<br />
matrix of private-property rights. Peer production is not new; rather, the<br />
relevant question concerns the magnitude of the changes.<br />
Here, the book suffers from a problem common to others in this genre.<br />
Benkler provides a wealth of anecdotes to illustrate the new economy’s<br />
revolutionary nature, but little information on magnitudes. How new?<br />
How large? How much? Cooperative, social production itself is hardly<br />
novel, as any reader of “I, Pencil” (Read, 1958) can attest. Before the web<br />
page, there was the pamphlet; before the Internet, the telegraph; before<br />
the Yahoo directory, the phone book; before the personal computer, electric<br />
service, the refrigerator, the washing machine, the telephone, <strong>and</strong> the<br />
VCR. In short, such breathlessly touted phenomena as network effects, the<br />
rapid diffusion of technological innovation, <strong>and</strong> highly valued intangible
159<br />
assets are not novel. (Tom St<strong>and</strong>age’s [1998] history of the telegraph <strong>and</strong><br />
its revolutionary impact, e Victorian Internet, is well worth reading in<br />
this regard.)<br />
Part two, “e Political Economy of Property <strong>and</strong> Commons,” is the<br />
book’s most original, provocative, <strong>and</strong>—for me—frustrating section. Benkler<br />
sees social production as a powerful force for individual liberty. People<br />
used to be passive recipients of news, information, norms, <strong>and</strong> culture; now<br />
they are active creators. Each participant in an open-source project, each<br />
creator of user-generated content on Wikipedia or YouTube, “has decided<br />
to take advantage of some combination of technical, organizational, <strong>and</strong><br />
social conditions within which we have come to live, <strong>and</strong> to become an<br />
active creator in his or her world, rather than merely to accept what was<br />
already there. e belief that it is possible to make something valuable<br />
happen in the world, <strong>and</strong> the practice of actually acting on that belief, represent<br />
a qualitative improvement in the condition of individual freedom”<br />
(Benkler, 2006, p. 137).<br />
What Benkler means by “freedom” <strong>and</strong> “liberty,” however, is not the<br />
classical liberal notion of the absence of state coercion, but the modern<br />
liberal view of “autonomy,” individuals’ ability to achieve their goals<br />
without restraints, voluntary or otherwise. is underst<strong>and</strong>ing of liberty,<br />
which originates with Kant <strong>and</strong> Rousseau, is central to Benkler’s political<br />
economy. Autonomy means that “individuals are less susceptible to manipulation<br />
by a legally defined class of others—the owners of communications<br />
infrastructure <strong>and</strong> media” (Benkler, 2006, p. 9)—hence Benkler’s sympathy<br />
for the commons, an institutional framework in which property rights<br />
are held not by individuals, but by a collective. It does not matter for Benkler<br />
whether the collective is a private club, such as the participants of an<br />
open-source project or the subscribers to a particular information service or<br />
the state. What matters is how the commons facilitates “freedom of action”<br />
in comparison to how a system of private-property rights affords freedom.<br />
Benkler strongly opposes privatizing the information commons by allowing<br />
owners to exercise property rights. He chides Cisco Systems, for<br />
example, for designing <strong>and</strong> deploying “smart routers” that allow broadb<strong>and</strong><br />
service providers to control the flows of packets through their systems<br />
(for example, giving priority to some forms of content over others).<br />
is action is akin to erecting toll gates on the Information Superhighway.<br />
To ensure open access to the networked economy, Benkler (2006,
160 <br />
p. 21) favors a public ownership network infrastructure, loose enforcement<br />
of intellectual property rights, subsidized R&D, <strong>and</strong> “strategic regulatory<br />
interventions to negate monopoly control over essential resources in the<br />
digital environment.”<br />
is approach has some problems. First, although information itself<br />
cannot be “owned,” the tangible media in which information is embedded<br />
<strong>and</strong> transmitted are scarce economic goods. Information may yearn to be<br />
“free,” but cables, switches, routers, disk drives, microprocessors, <strong>and</strong> the<br />
like yearn to be owned. Such innovations do not spring from nowhere;<br />
they are the creations of profit-seeking <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s that consumers or<br />
other <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s purchase to use as they see fit. Of course, private<br />
property can be nationalized. Federal, state, <strong>and</strong> local governments can<br />
own broadb<strong>and</strong> lines as they own streets <strong>and</strong> highways, or they can treat<br />
network infrastructure as a regulated public utility. If these resources are<br />
to be treated as public goods, then what about computers, iPods, <strong>and</strong> cell<br />
phones? Are these gateways to the Information Superhighway also part of<br />
the digital commons? If individuals can own cell phones, can they sign<br />
contracts with service providers to deliver whatever content is mutually<br />
agreed upon? Content providers <strong>and</strong> consumers are free to terminate their<br />
agreements if they are unhappy. In this sense, a private property regime<br />
allows as much “autonomy,” in the libertarian sense, as a commons-based<br />
system. Moreover, if one takes into account the problems of collective<br />
ownership, about which Benkler is largely silent, the case for the commons<br />
becomes even more problematic.<br />
Second, Benkler appears to adopt the Frankfurt school view of consumers<br />
as passive recipients of culture, easily manipulated by powerful<br />
corporate interests. “From the perspective of liberal political theory, the<br />
kind of open-participatory, transparent folk culture that is emerging in the<br />
networked environment is normatively more attractive than was the industrial<br />
cultural production system typified by Hollywood <strong>and</strong> the recording<br />
industry” (Benkler, 2006, p. 277). However, as Cowen (1998), Cantor<br />
(2001), <strong>and</strong> others have argued convincingly, commercial culture—which<br />
properly includes Elizabethan theater, classical music, <strong>and</strong> the Victorian<br />
novel, as well as television, movies, <strong>and</strong> popular music—has always been<br />
participatory in the broad sense Benkler describes. Far from being passive<br />
consumers of culture, individuals have played an active role in shaping the<br />
plays, books, songs, <strong>and</strong> shows made available to them simply by deciding
161<br />
to buy or not to buy, to patronize or not to patronize, to support or reject<br />
particular producers <strong>and</strong> particular products. e main difference today is<br />
that technological change—the advent of digital technology, cheap infrastructure,<br />
<strong>and</strong> the like—has lowered the costs of entry (production costs,<br />
distribution costs, <strong>and</strong> so forth), giving consumers additional options besides<br />
voice <strong>and</strong> exit. Is this difference one of degree or kind?<br />
Moreover, in any model of social <strong>and</strong> cultural production, opinion<br />
makers play an important role. Even today, on political blogs <strong>and</strong> other<br />
forms of user-generated content, the range of acceptable opinion among<br />
the dominant sites, the ones at the left-h<strong>and</strong> side of Anderson’s (2006)<br />
“long tail,” is hardly broader than what one finds in the New York Times or<br />
the Wall Street Journal. Yes, a great deal of user-generated content exists,<br />
but most of it is ignored <strong>and</strong> is unlikely to have any lasting influence.<br />
An elite group of gatekeepers, Hayek’s “second-h<strong>and</strong> dealers in ideas,”<br />
continues to exercise an important influence on social, political, <strong>and</strong> cultural<br />
trends. In this sense, Benkler seems influenced, ironically, by the<br />
perfectly competitive general equilibrium model of neoclassical economics,<br />
with its assumption that all agents possess complete, perfect information.<br />
He worries: private ownership of digital resources “gives some people the<br />
power to control the options perceived by, or the preferences of, others,<br />
[which] is ... a law that harms autonomy” (Benkler, 2006, p. 149). In a<br />
world of subjective knowledge <strong>and</strong> beliefs <strong>and</strong> of dispersed, tacit knowledge,<br />
how can everyone have the same perceived options? Elsewhere he<br />
dismisses the effectiveness of competition as a means of enabling “autonomy”<br />
under private ownership because of transaction costs. In other<br />
words, competition must be “perfect” to be effective. But he undertakes<br />
little comparative institutional analysis. What are the transaction costs<br />
associated with commons-based peer production?<br />
e book concludes with a section on public policy, summarizing Benkler’s<br />
(2006, p. 25) concerns about privatizing the digital commons—what<br />
he calls a “second enclosure movement”—<strong>and</strong> outlining a positive role<br />
for the state, whose most important job, he argues, is to maintain openness,<br />
or “neutrality,” within the economy’s digital infrastructure. Here,<br />
as elsewhere, I find the treatment of government failure much too glib.<br />
Information itself is not scarce, but, as noted earlier, is embodied in tangible<br />
resources that are subject to the usual economic laws of supply <strong>and</strong><br />
dem<strong>and</strong>. Public ownership implies that a host of agency, information,
162 <br />
<strong>and</strong> calculation problems need to be treated in an appropriately comparative<br />
manner, <strong>and</strong> Benkler does not do so. Despite these difficulties, e<br />
Wealth of Networks is a useful guide to the networked information economy<br />
<strong>and</strong> an eloquent statement of the left-liberal conception of the Internet’s<br />
“institutional ecology.” Benkler clearly believes that social production is<br />
more than a fad <strong>and</strong> has potentially revolutionary implications. I remain<br />
unconvinced, but I feel better informed about the relevant issues after<br />
reading Benkler’s book.<br />
<br />
C Why Intellectuals Still Support Socialism †<br />
Intellectuals, particularly academic intellectuals, tend to favor socialism<br />
<strong>and</strong> interventionism. How was the American university transformed from<br />
a center of higher learning to an outpost for socialist-inspired culture <strong>and</strong><br />
politics? As recently as the early 1950s, the typical American university<br />
professor held social <strong>and</strong> political views quite similar to those of the general<br />
population. Today—well, you’ve all heard the jokes that circulated after<br />
the collapse of central planning in Eastern Europe <strong>and</strong> the former USSR,<br />
how the only place in the world where Marxists were still thriving was the<br />
Harvard political science department.<br />
More generally, US higher education is now dominated by the students<br />
who were radicalized in the 1960s <strong>and</strong> who have now risen to positions<br />
of influence within colleges <strong>and</strong> universities. One needs only to<br />
observe the aggressive pursuit of “diversity” in admissions <strong>and</strong> hiring, the<br />
ab<strong>and</strong>onment of the traditional curriculum in favor of highly politicized<br />
“studies” based on group identity, the m<strong>and</strong>atory workshops on sensitivity<br />
training, <strong>and</strong> so on. A 1989 study for the Carnegie Foundation for the<br />
Advancement of Teaching used the categories “liberal” <strong>and</strong> “conservative.”<br />
It found that 70 percent of the professors in the major liberal arts colleges<br />
<strong>and</strong> research universities considered themselves liberal or moderately<br />
liberal, with less than 20 percent identifying themselves as conservative<br />
or moderately conservative (cited in Lee, 1994). (Of course, the term<br />
“liberal” here means left-liberal or socialist, not classical liberal.)<br />
† Published originally on Mises.org, November 16, 2006.
163<br />
Cardiff <strong>and</strong> Klein (2005) examined academics’ political affiliations<br />
using voter-registration records for tenure-track faculty at 11 California<br />
universities. ey find an average Democrat:Republican ratio of 5:1,<br />
ranging from 9:1 at Berkeley to 1:1 at Pepperdine. e humanities average<br />
10:1, while business schools are at only 1.3:1. (Needless to say, even at<br />
the heartless, dog-eat-dog, sycophant-of-the-bourgeoisie business schools<br />
the ratio doesn’t dip below 1:1.) While today’s Republicans are hardly<br />
anti-socialist—particularly on foreign policy—these figures are consistent<br />
with a widespread perception that university faculties are increasingly unrepresentative<br />
of the communities they supposedly serve.<br />
Now here’s a surprise: even in economics, 63 percent of the faculty<br />
in the Carnegie study identified themselves as liberal, compared with 72<br />
percent in anthropology, political science, <strong>and</strong> sociology, 76 percent in<br />
ethnic studies, history, <strong>and</strong> philosophy, <strong>and</strong> 88 percent in public affairs.<br />
e Cardiff <strong>and</strong> Klein study finds an average D:R ratio in economics<br />
departments of 2.8:1—lower than the sociologists’ 44:1, to be sure,<br />
but higher than that of biological <strong>and</strong> chemical engineering, electrical<br />
engineering, computer science, management, marketing, accounting, <strong>and</strong><br />
finance. A survey of American Economic Association members, examined<br />
by Klein <strong>and</strong> Stern (2006), finds that most economists support<br />
safety regulations, gun control, redistribution, public schooling, <strong>and</strong> antidiscrimination<br />
laws. Another survey, reported in the Southern Economic<br />
Journal, reveals that “71 percent of American economists believe the<br />
distribution of income in the US should be more equal, <strong>and</strong> 81 percent<br />
feel that the redistribution of income is a legitimate role for government.<br />
Support for these positions is even stronger among economists with academic<br />
affiliations, <strong>and</strong> stronger still among economists with elite academic<br />
affiliations” (Lee, 1994, p. 21).<br />
Why do so many university professors—<strong>and</strong> intellectuals more generally—favor<br />
socialism <strong>and</strong> interventionism? F. A. Hayek offered a partial<br />
explanation in his 1949 essay “e Intellectuals <strong>and</strong> Socialism.” Hayek<br />
asked why “the more active, intelligent <strong>and</strong> original men among [American]<br />
intellectuals . . . most frequently incline toward socialism.” His answer<br />
is based on the opportunities available to people of varying talents.<br />
Academics tend to be highly intelligent people. Given their leftward<br />
leanings, one might be tempted to infer from this that more intelligent<br />
people tend to favor socialism. However, this conclusion suffers from what
164 <br />
empirical researchers call “sample selection bias.” Intelligent people hold<br />
a variety of views. Some are lovers of liberty, defenders of property, <strong>and</strong><br />
supporters of the “natural order”—i.e., defenders of the market. Others<br />
are reformers, wanting to remake the world according to their own visions<br />
of the ideal society. Hayek argues that exceptionally intelligent people who<br />
favor the market tend to find opportunities for professional <strong>and</strong> financial<br />
success outside the Academy (i.e., in the business or professional world).<br />
ose who are highly intelligent but ill-disposed toward the market are<br />
more likely to choose an academic career. For this reason, the universities<br />
come to be filled with those intellectuals who were favorably disposed<br />
toward socialism from the beginning.<br />
is also leads to the phenomenon that academics don’t know much<br />
about how markets work, since they have so little experience with them,<br />
living as they do in their subsidized ivory towers <strong>and</strong> protected by academic<br />
tenure. As Joseph Schumpeter explained in Capitalism, Socialism,<br />
<strong>and</strong> Democracy (1942, p. 17), it is “the absence of direct responsibility for<br />
practical affairs” that distinguishes the academic intellectual from others<br />
“who wield the power of the spoken <strong>and</strong> the written word.” is absence of<br />
direct responsibility leads to a corresponding absence of first-h<strong>and</strong> knowledge<br />
of practical affairs. e critical attitude of the intellectual arises, says<br />
Schumpeter, “no less from the intellectual’s situation as an onlooker—in<br />
most cases also as an outsider—than from the fact that his main chance of<br />
asserting himself lies in his actual or potential nuisance value.”<br />
Hayek’s account is incomplete, however, because it doesn’t explain why<br />
academics have become more <strong>and</strong> more interventionist throughout the<br />
twentieth century. As mentioned above, during the first half of the twentieth<br />
century university faculty members tended to hold political views<br />
similar to those held by the general population. What caused the change?<br />
To answer, we must realize first that academics receive many direct<br />
benefits from the welfare state, <strong>and</strong> that these benefits have increased over<br />
time. Excluding student financial aid, public universities receive about 50<br />
percent of their funding from federal <strong>and</strong> state governments, dwarfing the<br />
18 percent they receive from tuition <strong>and</strong> fees. Even “private” universities<br />
like Stanford or Harvard receive around 20 percent of their budgets from<br />
federal grants <strong>and</strong> contracts (US Department of Education, 1996). Including<br />
student financial aid, the figure is almost 50 percent. According to the<br />
US Department of Education, about a third of all students at public, 4-
165<br />
year colleges <strong>and</strong> universities, <strong>and</strong> half the students at private colleges <strong>and</strong><br />
universities, receive financial aid from the federal government.<br />
In this sense, the most dramatic example of “corporate welfare” in the<br />
US is the GI Bill, which subsidized the academic sector, bloating it far<br />
beyond the level the market would have provided. e GI Bill, signed<br />
by President Roosevelt in 1944 to send returning soldiers to colleges <strong>and</strong><br />
universities, cost taxpayers $14.5 billion between 1944 <strong>and</strong> 1956 (Skocpol,<br />
1996). e latest (2008) version of the GI Bill is expected to cost $52<br />
billion over the next ten years.<br />
To see why this government aid is so important to the higher education<br />
establishment, we need only stop to consider for a moment what academics<br />
would do in a purely free society. e fact is that most academics simply<br />
aren’t that important. In a free society, there would be far fewer of them<br />
than there are today. eir public visibility would no doubt be quite low.<br />
Most would be poorly paid. ough some would be engaged in scholarly<br />
research, the vast majority would be teachers. eir job would be to pass<br />
the collective wisdom of the ages along to the next generation. In all<br />
likelihood, there would also be far fewer students. Some students would<br />
attend traditional colleges <strong>and</strong> universities, but many more students would<br />
attend technical <strong>and</strong> vocational schools, where their instructors would be<br />
men <strong>and</strong> women with practical knowledge.<br />
Today, many professors at major research universities do little teaching.<br />
eir primary activity is research, though much of that is questionable as<br />
real scholarship. One needs only to browse through the latest specialty<br />
journals to see what passes for scholarly research in most disciplines. In the<br />
humanities <strong>and</strong> social sciences, it is likely to be postmodern gobbledygook;<br />
in the professional schools, vocationally oriented technical reports. Much<br />
of this research is funded in the United States by government agencies,<br />
such as the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health,<br />
the National Endowment for the Humanities, the USDA, <strong>and</strong> others. e<br />
large universities have tens of thous<strong>and</strong>s of students, themselves supported<br />
by government-subsidized loans <strong>and</strong> grants.<br />
Beyond university life, academics also compete for prestigious posts<br />
within government agencies. Consider economics. e US federal government<br />
employs at least 3,000 economists—about 15% of all members<br />
of the American Economic Association. e Federal Reserve System itself<br />
employs several hundred. ere are also advisory posts, affiliations
166 <br />
with important government agencies, memberships of federally appointed<br />
commissions, <strong>and</strong> other career-enhancing activities. ese benefits are not<br />
simply financial. ey are also psychological. As Lee (1994, p. 22) puts it:<br />
Like every other group, academics like to exert influence <strong>and</strong> feel<br />
important. Few scholars in the social sciences <strong>and</strong> humanities are<br />
content just to observe, describe, <strong>and</strong> explain society; most want<br />
to improve society <strong>and</strong> are naive enough to believe that they could<br />
do so if only they had sufficient influence. e existence of a huge<br />
government offers academics the real possibility of living out their<br />
reformist fantasies. 1<br />
It’s clear, then, that for academics, there are many benefits to living<br />
in a highly interventionist society. It should be no wonder, then, that<br />
academics tend to support those interventions. Economists, in particular,<br />
play active roles as government advisers, creating <strong>and</strong> sustaining the welfare<br />
state that now surrounds us. Naturally, when government funds their<br />
research, economists in applied fields such as agricultural economics <strong>and</strong><br />
monetary economics are unlikely to call for serious regulatory reform in<br />
their specialty areas.<br />
Murray Rothbard devotes an interesting chapter of Man, Economy,<br />
<strong>and</strong> State, to the traditional role of the economist in public life. Rothbard<br />
notes that the functions of the economist on the free market differ strongly<br />
from those of the economist on the hampered market. “What can the<br />
economist do on the purely free market?” Rothbard asks. “He can explain<br />
the workings of the market economy (a vital task, especially since the<br />
untutored person tends to regard the market economy as sheer chaos), but<br />
he can do little else.”<br />
Furthermore, economists are not traditionally popular as policy advisors.<br />
Economics teaches that resources are limited, that choices made<br />
imply opportunities forgone, that our actions can have unintended consequences.<br />
is is typically not what government officials want to hear.<br />
When they propose an import tariff to help domestic manufacturers, we<br />
economists explain that this protection will come only at the expense of<br />
domestic consumers. When they suggest a minimum-wage law to raise the<br />
incomes of low-wage workers, we show that such a law hurts the very people<br />
it purports to help by forcing them out of work. Over the last several<br />
1 See also Pasour (2004) <strong>and</strong> White (2005) on the influence of government spending<br />
on research in agricultural economics <strong>and</strong> monetary economics, respectively.
167<br />
decades, however, the role of the economist has exp<strong>and</strong>ed dramatically.<br />
Partly for the reasons we discussed earlier, the welfare state has partly coopted<br />
the profession of economics. Just as a higher murder rate increases<br />
the dem<strong>and</strong> for criminologists, so the growth of the welfare/regulatory<br />
state increases the dem<strong>and</strong> for policy analysts, antitrust consultants, tax<br />
<strong>and</strong> regulatory experts, <strong>and</strong> various forecasters.<br />
To some degree, the increasing professionalization of the economics<br />
business must share the blame for this change. e economists’ premier<br />
professional society, the American Economic Association, was itself created<br />
as an explicitly “progressive” organization. Its founder, the religious <strong>and</strong><br />
social reformer Richard T. Ely, planned an association, he reported to a<br />
colleague, of “economists who repudiate laissez-faire as a scientific doctrine”<br />
(Coats, 1960, p. 556). e other founding members, all of whom<br />
had been trained in Germany under Gustav Schmoller <strong>and</strong> other members<br />
of the younger German Historical School—the so-called Socialists of the<br />
Chair—were similarly possessed with reformist zeal. e constitution of<br />
the AEA still contains references to the “positive role of the church, the<br />
state <strong>and</strong> science in the solution of social problems by the development<br />
of legislative policy” (Coats, 1960, p. 558). Fortunately, the AEA subsequently<br />
distanced itself from the aims of its founders, although its annual<br />
distinguished lecture is still called the “Richard T. Ely lecture.” 2<br />
If asked to select a single event that most encouraged the transformation<br />
of the average economist from a critic of intervention to a defender<br />
of the welfare state, I would name the Second World War. To be sure,<br />
it was the Progressive Era that saw the permanent introduction of the<br />
income tax <strong>and</strong> the establishment of the Federal Reserve System. And<br />
it was during the Great Depression that Washington, D.C., first began to<br />
employ a substantial number of economists to join such central planning<br />
organizations as the National Resources Planning Board. Still, even in<br />
those years, the average economist favored free trade, low taxes, <strong>and</strong> sound<br />
money.<br />
World War II, however, was a watershed event for the profession. For<br />
the first time, professional economists joined the ranks of government<br />
planning bureaus en masse. One job was to control prices, as with the<br />
Office of Price Administration, led by Leon Henderson <strong>and</strong> later John<br />
2 For more on the professionalization of economics see Bernstein (2001).
168 <br />
Kenneth Galbraith. is group included prominent free-market economists<br />
such as Herbert Stein <strong>and</strong> George Stigler. Another role was to study<br />
military procurement (what later became known as “operations research”)<br />
with Columbia University’s Statistical Research Group (including Stigler,<br />
Milton Friedman, Harold Hotelling, Abraham Wald, Leonard Savage), or<br />
with the Army’s Statistical Control Group, which was led by Tex ornton,<br />
later president of Litton Industries, <strong>and</strong> his “Whiz Kids.” e most famous<br />
Whiz Kid was Robert McNamara, ornton’s leading protégé, who later<br />
applied the same techniques to the management of the Vietnam War. 3<br />
Moreover, before World War II the primary language of economics, in<br />
the English-speaking world, was English. Since then, however, economic<br />
theory has come to be expressed in obscure mathematical jargon, while<br />
economic history has become a branch of applied statistics. It is common<br />
to attribute this change to the publication of Paul Samuelson’s mathematical<br />
treatise (Samuelson, 1947), <strong>and</strong> to the development of computers.<br />
ese are no doubt important. However, it is likely the taste for central<br />
planning that economists—even nominally free-market economists—got<br />
during World War II that forever changed the direction of the discipline.<br />
What about other public figures, what Hayek called “second-h<strong>and</strong><br />
dealers in ideas”—the journalists, book editors, high-school teachers, <strong>and</strong><br />
other members of the “opinion-molding” class? First, intelligent <strong>and</strong> articulate<br />
liberals (in the classical sense) tend to go into business <strong>and</strong> the<br />
professions (Hayek’s selection-bias argument). Second, many journalists<br />
trade integrity for access; few are brave enough to challenge the state,<br />
because they crave information, interviews, <strong>and</strong> time with state officials.<br />
What does the future hold? It is impossible to say for sure, but there are<br />
encouraging signs. e main reason is technology. e web has challenged<br />
the state university <strong>and</strong> state media cartels as never before. You don’t need<br />
a PhD to write for Wikipedia. What does the rise of the new media, new<br />
means of sharing information, new ways of establishing authority <strong>and</strong> credibility,<br />
imply for universities as credential factories? Moreover, as universities<br />
become more vocationally oriented, they will find it hard to compete<br />
with specialized, technology-intensive institutions such as DeVry University<br />
<strong>and</strong> the University of Phoenix, the fastest-growing US universities.<br />
3 On Litton see also Sobel (1984, pp. 68–72). On the relationship between ornton<br />
<strong>and</strong> McNamara see Shapley (1993) <strong>and</strong> Byrne (1993).
169<br />
e current crises in higher education <strong>and</strong> the media are probably<br />
good things, in the long run, if they force a rethinking of educational <strong>and</strong><br />
intellectual goals <strong>and</strong> objectives, <strong>and</strong> take power away from the establishment<br />
institutions. en, <strong>and</strong> only then, we may see a rebirth of genuine<br />
scholarship, communication, <strong>and</strong> education.<br />
<br />
D Management Theory <strong>and</strong> the Business Cycle †<br />
(with Nicolai J. Foss)<br />
Is management theory to blame for the current crisis in the world economy?<br />
Some commentators think that business schools’ focus on shareholder<br />
wealth maximization, performance-based pay, <strong>and</strong> the virtue of<br />
self-interest have led banks, corporations, <strong>and</strong> governments astray. Hefty<br />
bonuses promoted excessive risk-taking, <strong>and</strong> the free-market philosophy<br />
taught in business schools removed the final ethical checks <strong>and</strong> balances<br />
on such behavior. “It is the type of thinking,” worry Raymond Fisman <strong>and</strong><br />
Rakesh Khurana (2008), “that is now bringing capitalism to its knees.”<br />
e populist crackdown on executive pay is linked to such thinking.<br />
e late Sumantra Ghoshal of the London Business School, widely hailed<br />
as one of the world’s foremost management gurus, was a forceful critic of<br />
performance pay <strong>and</strong> its allegedly destructive consequences. More generally,<br />
Ghoshal thought that management theory was “bad for practice”<br />
financially, ethically, <strong>and</strong> politically Ghoshal <strong>and</strong> Moran (1996); Ghoshal<br />
(2005).<br />
We think, however, that management theory has much to offer policymakers,<br />
practitioners, <strong>and</strong> analysts seeking to underst<strong>and</strong> the current crisis.<br />
Take, for example, the notion of heterogeneity. e idea that resources,<br />
firms, <strong>and</strong> industries are different from each other—that capital <strong>and</strong> labor<br />
are specialized for particular projects <strong>and</strong> activities, that people are<br />
distinct—is ubiquitous in the theory <strong>and</strong> practice of management. What<br />
strategists call competitive advantage arises from heterogeneity, from doing<br />
something differently from the competition. Human-resource managers<br />
† Published originally as “Management eory is Not to Blame,” Mises.org, March 19,<br />
2009. See also Agarwal, Barney, Foss, <strong>and</strong> Klein (2009) for further details.
170 <br />
deal with an increasingly diverse workforce <strong>and</strong> people with highly specialized<br />
talents. Firms that exp<strong>and</strong> internationally learn the lessons of market,<br />
cultural, <strong>and</strong> institutional heterogeneity. As a consequence, management<br />
scholars think of firms as bundles of heterogeneous resources or assets.<br />
Assets can be specific to certain firms. Assets may be “co-specialized” with<br />
other assets, such that they generate value only in certain combinations.<br />
And as any accountant knows, assets have different (economic) life expectancies.<br />
Such unique <strong>and</strong> specialized assets can also be intangible, such<br />
as worker-specific knowledge or firm-specific capabilities.<br />
To the uninitiated this may sound trite. But look at economics. Here<br />
homogeneity, not heterogeneity, rules the roost. Economic models of industries<br />
<strong>and</strong> economies typically start with “representative firms,” implying<br />
that all firms in an industry are alike. is may be a h<strong>and</strong>y starting point if<br />
one is interested in the industry per se rather than in individual firms, but<br />
can be seriously misleading if one is interested in the relative performance<br />
of firms or industries.<br />
And, here, macroeconomists are the worst transgressors. eir models<br />
of an entire economy treat factors of production as homogeneous within<br />
categories. us, “labor” means homogeneous labor inputs. “Capital” has<br />
the same interpretation. Nobel Laureate Robert Solow adopted the notion<br />
of “shmoo” from the comic Lil’ Abner—shmoos are identical creatures<br />
shaped like bowling pins with legs—to capture this kind of homogeneity.<br />
is style of reasoning originated with Ricardo, who found it a useful<br />
simplification. And it can be. But sometimes economists’ assumption of<br />
homogeneity leads them into trouble, as is the case with the current crisis.<br />
e macroeconomic problem, we are told, is that “banks” made unwise<br />
investments, <strong>and</strong> now aren’t “lending” enough. “Businesses” <strong>and</strong> “consumers”<br />
can’t get “loans.” “Firms” have too many “bad assets” on their<br />
books. e key question, though, is which ones? Which banks aren’t lending<br />
to which customers? Which firms have made poor investments? A loan<br />
isn’t a loan isn’t a loan. e relevant question, in analyzing the credit mess,<br />
is which loans aren’t being made, to whom, <strong>and</strong> why? e critical issues are<br />
the composition of lending, not the amount. Total lending, total liquidity,<br />
average equity prices, <strong>and</strong> the like obscure the key questions about how<br />
resources are being allocated across sectors, firms, <strong>and</strong> individuals, whether<br />
bad investments are being liquidated, <strong>and</strong> so on. Such aggregate notions<br />
homogenize—<strong>and</strong> in doing so, suppress critical information about relative
171<br />
prices. e main function of capital markets, after all, is not to moderate<br />
the total amount of financial capital, but to allocate capital across activities.<br />
e US stimulus package <strong>and</strong> similar proposals around the world are<br />
likewise stymied by their crude, Keynesian-style reliance on macroeconomic<br />
aggregates. According to the common wisdom, the bank crisis led<br />
to a collapse of effective aggregate dem<strong>and</strong>, <strong>and</strong> only massive increases in<br />
government expenditure (<strong>and</strong> government debt) can kick-start the economy.<br />
Expenditures—on what? It doesn’t matter: just spend. e only<br />
criterion is whether the projects are “shovel-ready.”<br />
But a shovel isn’t a shovel isn’t a shovel. As Hayek—Keynes’s most<br />
important intellectual opponent—argued in the 1930s <strong>and</strong> 1940s, the<br />
economy’s capital structure is a complex <strong>and</strong> delicate structure, one that<br />
cannot be mashed <strong>and</strong> pushed like putty. Resources cannot be shifted<br />
costlessly from one activity to another, particularly in a modern economy<br />
in which much of those resources are embodied in industry-specific,<br />
firm-specific, <strong>and</strong> worker-specific capabilities. Even idle resources can be<br />
misallocated—what Hayek <strong>and</strong> Mises called “malinvestment”—if invested<br />
in activities that don’t produce the goods <strong>and</strong> services the economy needs.<br />
Every manager knows that directing specialized resources to the wrong<br />
projects is a bad bet, even if it leads to a slight boost in short-term earnings.<br />
In the same way, the path to economic recovery is to allow markets to<br />
channel specialized resources to their highest-valued uses, not to dump<br />
taxpayer funds on whatever firms <strong>and</strong> industries happen to be ready for<br />
them—or politically connected. In an important sense, banks’ failure<br />
to distinguish among heterogeneous borrowers got us into this mess. A<br />
mistaken focus on homogeneity, in pursuit of a quick fix, will only bring<br />
more of the same.<br />
E Menger the Revolutionary †<br />
<br />
“ere never lived at the same time,” wrote Ludwig von Mises (1949,<br />
p. 869), “more than a score of men whose work contributed anything<br />
essential to economics.” One of those men was Carl Menger (1840–1921),<br />
† Published originally as the Foreword to Carl Menger, Principles of Economics (reprint<br />
edition, Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006).
172 <br />
Professor of Political Economy at the University of Vienna <strong>and</strong> founder<br />
of the Austrian school of economics. Menger’s path-breaking Grundsätze<br />
der Volkswirtschaftslehre [Principles of Economics], published in 1871, not<br />
only introduced the concept of marginal analysis, it presented a radically<br />
new approach to economic analysis, one that still forms the core of the<br />
Austrian theory of value <strong>and</strong> price.<br />
Unlike his contemporaries William Stanley Jevons <strong>and</strong> Léon Walras,<br />
who independently developed concepts of marginal utility during the<br />
1870s, Menger favored an approach that was deductive, teleological,<br />
<strong>and</strong>, in a fundamental sense, humanistic. While Menger shared his<br />
contemporaries’ preference for abstract reasoning, he was primarily interested<br />
in explaining the real-world actions of real people, not in creating<br />
artificial, stylized representations of reality. Economics, for Menger, is the<br />
study of purposeful human choice, the relationship between means <strong>and</strong><br />
ends. “All things are subject to the law of cause <strong>and</strong> effect,” he begins<br />
his treatise. “is great principle knows no exception” (Menger, 1871,<br />
p. 51). Jevons <strong>and</strong> Walras rejected cause <strong>and</strong> effect in favor of simultaneous<br />
determination, the idea that complex systems can be modeled as<br />
systems of simultaneous equations in which no variable can be said to<br />
“cause” another. is has become the st<strong>and</strong>ard approach in contemporary<br />
economics, accepted by nearly all economists but the followers of Menger.<br />
Menger sought to explain prices as the outcome of the purposeful, voluntary<br />
interactions of buyers <strong>and</strong> sellers, each guided by their own, subjective<br />
evaluations of the usefulness of various goods <strong>and</strong> services in satisfying<br />
their objectives (what we now call marginal utility, a term later coined<br />
by Friedrich von Wieser). Trade is thus the result of people’s deliberate<br />
attempts to improve their well-being, not an innate “propensity to truck,<br />
barter, <strong>and</strong> exchange,” as suggested by Adam Smith (1776, I, p. 24). e<br />
exact quantities of goods exchanged—their prices, in other words—are<br />
determined by the values individuals attach to marginal units of these<br />
goods. With a single buyer <strong>and</strong> seller, goods are exchanged as long as<br />
participants can agree on an exchange ratio that leaves each better off than<br />
he was before.<br />
In a market with many buyers <strong>and</strong> sellers, the price reflects the valuations<br />
of the buyer least willing to buy <strong>and</strong> the seller least willing to sell,<br />
what Böhm-Bawerk would call the “marginal pairs.” With each voluntary<br />
exchange, then, the gains from trade are momentarily exhausted, regardless
173<br />
of the exact structure of the market. Menger’s highly general explanation<br />
of price formation continues to form the core of Austrian microeconomics.<br />
Menger’s analysis has been labeled “causal-realistic,” partly to emphasize<br />
the distinction between Menger’s approach <strong>and</strong> that of the neoclassical<br />
economists (see chapter 7 for a detailed discussion of Menger’s economic<br />
theory). Besides its focus on causal relations, Menger’s analysis is realistic in<br />
the sense that he sought not to develop formal models of hypothetical economic<br />
relationships, but to explain the actual prices paid every day in real<br />
markets. e classical economists had explained that prices are the result<br />
of supply <strong>and</strong> dem<strong>and</strong>, but they lacked a satisfactory theory of valuation to<br />
explain buyers’ willingness to pay for goods <strong>and</strong> services. Rejecting value<br />
subjectivism, the classical economists tended to treat dem<strong>and</strong> as relatively<br />
unimportant <strong>and</strong> concentrated on hypothetical “long-run” conditions, in<br />
which “objective” characteristics of goods—most importantly, their costs<br />
of production—would determine their prices. e classical economists<br />
also tended to group factors of production into broad categories—l<strong>and</strong>,<br />
labor, <strong>and</strong> capital—leaving them unable to explain the prices of discrete,<br />
heterogeneous units of these factors. Menger realized that the actual prices<br />
paid for goods <strong>and</strong> services reflect not some objective, “intrinsic” characteristics,<br />
but rather the uses to which discrete units of goods <strong>and</strong> services<br />
can be put as perceived, subjectively, by individual buyers <strong>and</strong> sellers.<br />
e Principles was written as an introductory volume in a proposed<br />
multi-volume work. As noted in chapter 7 above, however, no later volumes<br />
were written. Menger did not in the Principles develop explicitly<br />
the concept of opportunity cost, he did not extend his analysis to explain<br />
the prices of the factors of production, <strong>and</strong> he did not develop a theory<br />
of monetary calculation. ose advances would come later from his students<br />
<strong>and</strong> disciples Böhm-Bawerk, Wieser, J. B. Clark, Wicksteed, Fetter,<br />
Davenport, Mises, <strong>and</strong> Hayek. Many of the most important ideas are<br />
implicit in Menger’s analysis, however. For example, his distinction among<br />
goods of lower <strong>and</strong> higher “orders,” referring to their place in the temporal<br />
sequence of production, forms the heart of Austrian capital theory, one of<br />
its most distinctive <strong>and</strong> important elements. Indeed, Menger emphasizes<br />
the passage of time throughout his analysis, an emphasis that has not yet<br />
made its way into mainstream economic theorizing.<br />
While most contemporary economics treatises are turgid <strong>and</strong> dull,<br />
Menger’s book is remarkably easy to read, even today. His prose is lucid,
174 <br />
his analysis is logical <strong>and</strong> systematic, his examples clear <strong>and</strong> informative.<br />
e Principles remains an excellent introduction to economic reasoning<br />
<strong>and</strong>, for the specialist, the classic statement of the core principles of the<br />
Austrian school.<br />
As Hayek (1976, p. 12) writes, the significance of the Austrian school<br />
is “entirely due to the foundations laid by this one man.” However, while<br />
Menger is universally recognized as the Austrian school’s founder, his<br />
causal-realistic approach to price formation is not always appreciated, even<br />
within contemporary Austrian economics. As we saw in chapter 7, Vaughn<br />
(1994) finds Menger’s price theory unoriginal, identifying as the distinctive<br />
“Austrian” contribution in Menger his brief references to institutions,<br />
evolution, <strong>and</strong> the like. My view is different: Menger’s main contribution<br />
to the Austrian tradition is his price theory, his “mundane” economics,<br />
which is distinct from that of the neoclassical tradition <strong>and</strong> which is the<br />
fundamental building block of Austrian economic analysis.<br />
Another remarkable feature of Menger’s contribution is that it appeared<br />
in German, while the then-dominant approach in the Germanspeaking<br />
world was that of the “younger” German historical school, which<br />
eschewed theoretical analysis altogether in favor of inductive, ideologically<br />
driven, historical case studies. e most accomplished theoretical economists,<br />
the British classicals such as J. S. Mill, were largely unknown to<br />
German-speaking writers. As Hayek (1976, p. 13) notes, “[i]n Engl<strong>and</strong><br />
the progress of economic theory only stagnated. In Germany a second<br />
generation of historical economists grew up who had not only never become<br />
really acquainted with the one well-developed system of theory that<br />
existed, but had also learnt to regard theoretical speculations of any sort as<br />
useless if not positively harmful.” Menger’s approach—haughtily dismissed<br />
by the leader of the German historical school, Gustav Schmoller, as merely<br />
“Austrian,” the origin of that label—led to a renaissance of theoretical<br />
economics in Europe <strong>and</strong>, later, in the US.<br />
In short, the core concepts of contemporary Austrian economics—human<br />
action, means <strong>and</strong> ends, subjective value, marginal analysis, methodological<br />
individualism, the time structure of production, <strong>and</strong> so on—along<br />
with the Austrian theory of value <strong>and</strong> price, which forms the heart of<br />
Austrian analysis, all flow from Menger’s pathbreaking work. As Salerno<br />
(1999a, p. 71) has written, “Austrian economics always was <strong>and</strong> will forever<br />
remain Mengerian economics.”
175<br />
F Hayek the Innovator †<br />
F. A. Hayek is undoubtedly the most eminent of the modern Austrian<br />
economists. Student of Friedrich von Wieser, protégé <strong>and</strong> colleague<br />
of Mises, <strong>and</strong> foremost representative of an outst<strong>and</strong>ing generation of<br />
Austrian school theorists, Hayek was more successful than anyone else in<br />
spreading Austrian ideas throughout the English-speaking world. “When<br />
the definitive history of economic analysis during the 1930s comes to be<br />
written,” said John Hicks in 1967, “a leading character in the drama (it was<br />
quite a drama) will be Professor Hayek.... [I]t is hardly remembered that<br />
there was a time when the new theories of Hayek were the principal rival of<br />
the new theories of Keynes” (Hicks, 1967, p. 203). Unfortunately, Hayek’s<br />
theory of the business cycle was eventually swept aside by the Keynesian<br />
revolution. Ultimately, however, this work was again recognized when<br />
Hayek received, along with the Swede Gunnar Myrdal, the 1974 Nobel<br />
Memorial Prize in Economic Science. Hayek was a prolific writer over<br />
nearly seven decades; his Collected Works, currently being published by<br />
the University of Chicago Press <strong>and</strong> Routledge, are projected at nineteen<br />
volumes.<br />
Life <strong>and</strong> work<br />
Hayek’s life spanned the twentieth century, <strong>and</strong> he made his home in some<br />
of the great intellectual communities of the period. 4 Born Friedrich August<br />
von Hayek in 1899 to a distinguished family of Viennese intellectuals, 5<br />
Hayek attended the University of Vienna, earning doctorates in 1921 <strong>and</strong><br />
1923. Hayek came to the University at age 19 just after World War I, when<br />
it was one of the three best places in the world to study economics (the others<br />
being Stockholm <strong>and</strong> Cambridge, Engl<strong>and</strong>). ough he was enrolled<br />
as a law student, his primary interests were economics <strong>and</strong> psychology,<br />
the latter due to the influence of Mach’s theory of perception on Wieser<br />
† Published originally as “F. A. Hayek: Austrian Economist <strong>and</strong> Social eorist,”<br />
in R<strong>and</strong>all G. Holcombe, ed., Fifteen Great Austrian Economists. Auburn, Ala.: Mises<br />
Institute, 1999, pp. 181–94.<br />
4 Hayek (1994), <strong>and</strong> the introduction by Stephen Kresge.<br />
5 Hayek’s father was a physician <strong>and</strong> botanist. One gr<strong>and</strong>father, a statistician, was a<br />
friend of Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk; the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was a second<br />
cousin.
176 <br />
<strong>and</strong> Wieser’s colleague Othmar Spann, <strong>and</strong> the former stemming from the<br />
reformist ideal of Fabian socialism so typical of Hayek’s generation.<br />
Like many students of economics then <strong>and</strong> since, Hayek chose the<br />
subject not for its own sake, but because he wanted to improve social<br />
conditions—the poverty of postwar Vienna serving as a daily reminder<br />
of such a need. Socialism seemed to provide a solution. en in 1922<br />
Mises published his Die Gemeinwirtschaft, later translated as Socialism.<br />
“To none of us young men who read the book when it appeared,” Hayek<br />
recalled, “the world was ever the same again” (Hayek, 1956, p. 133). Socialism,<br />
an elaboration of Mises’s pioneering article from two years before,<br />
argued that economic calculation requires a market for the means<br />
of production; without such a market there is no way to establish the<br />
values of those means <strong>and</strong>, consequently, no way to find their proper uses<br />
in production. Mises’s devastating attack on central planning converted<br />
Hayek to laissez-faire, along with contemporaries like Wilhelm Röpke,<br />
Lionel Robbins, <strong>and</strong> Bertil Ohlin. It was around this time that Hayek<br />
began attending Mises’s famed Privatseminar. Regular participants, who<br />
received no academic credit or other official recognition for their time,<br />
included Hayek, Gottfried Haberler, Fritz Machlup, Oskar Morgenstern,<br />
Paul Rosenstein-Rodan, Richard von Strigl, Karl Schlesinger, Felix Kaufmann,<br />
Alfred Schütz, Eric Voegelin, Karl Menger, Jr., <strong>and</strong> others not so<br />
famous. For several years the Privatseminar was the center of the economics<br />
community in Vienna, attracting such visitors as Robbins from London<br />
<strong>and</strong> Howard S. Ellis from Berkeley. Later, Hayek became the first of this<br />
group to leave Vienna; most of the others, along with Mises himself, were<br />
also gone by the start of World War II.<br />
Mises had done earlier work on monetary <strong>and</strong> banking theory, successfully<br />
applying the Austrian marginal utility principle to the value of<br />
money <strong>and</strong> then sketching a theory of industrial fluctuations based on<br />
the doctrines of the British Currency School <strong>and</strong> the ideas of the Swedish<br />
economist Knut Wicksell. Hayek used this last as a starting point for<br />
his own research on fluctuations, explaining the origin of the business<br />
cycle in terms of bank credit expansion <strong>and</strong> its transmission in terms of<br />
capital malinvestments. His work in this area eventually earned him an<br />
invitation to lecture at the London School of Economics <strong>and</strong> Political<br />
Science <strong>and</strong> then to occupy its Tooke Chair in Economics <strong>and</strong> Statistics,<br />
which he accepted in 1931. ere he found himself among a vibrant <strong>and</strong>
177<br />
exciting group: Robbins, J. R. Hicks, Arnold Plant, Dennis Robertson,<br />
T. E. Gregory, Abba Lerner, Kenneth Boulding, <strong>and</strong> George Shackle, to<br />
name only the most prominent. Hayek brought his (to them) unfamiliar<br />
views, 6 <strong>and</strong> gradually, the “Austrian” theory of the business cycle became<br />
known <strong>and</strong> accepted. At the LSE Hayek lectured on Mises’s business-cycle<br />
theory, which he was refining <strong>and</strong> which, until Keynes’s General eory<br />
came out in 1936, was rapidly gaining adherents in Britain <strong>and</strong> the US<br />
<strong>and</strong> was becoming the preferred explanation of the Depression. Hayek <strong>and</strong><br />
Keynes had sparred in the early 1930s in the pages of the Economic Journal<br />
over Keynes’s Treatise on Money. As one of Keynes’s leading professional<br />
adversaries, Hayek was well situated to provide a full refutation of the<br />
General eory. But he never did. Part of the explanation for this no doubt<br />
lies with Keynes’s personal charm <strong>and</strong> legendary rhetorical skill, along with<br />
Hayek’s general reluctance to engage in direct confrontation with his colleagues.<br />
7 Hayek also considered Keynes an ally in the fight against wartime<br />
inflation <strong>and</strong> did not want to detract from that issue (Hayek, 1994, p. 91).<br />
Furthermore, as Hayek later explained, Keynes was constantly changing his<br />
theoretical framework, <strong>and</strong> Hayek saw no point in working out a detailed<br />
critique of the General eory, if Keynes might change his mind again<br />
(Hayek, 1963b, p. 60; Hayek, 1966, pp. 240–41). Hayek thought a better<br />
course would be to produce a fuller elaboration of Böhm-Bawerk’s capital<br />
theory, <strong>and</strong> he began to devote his energies to this project. Unfortunately,<br />
e Pure eory of Capital was not completed until 1941, <strong>and</strong> by then the<br />
Keynesian macro model had become firmly established. 8<br />
Within a very few years, however, the fortunes of the Austrian school<br />
6 Hicks (1967, p. 204) noted, in reference to Hayek’s first (1931) English book, that<br />
“Prices <strong>and</strong> Production was in English, but it was not English economics.”<br />
7 In addition, Hayek (1963b, p. 60) cited his own “tiredness from controversy”; he had<br />
already engaged the market socialists on economic calculation, Knight on capital theory,<br />
<strong>and</strong> Keynes on money.<br />
8 For more on Hayek’s failure to respond to the General eory see Caldwell (1995),<br />
especially pp. 40–6. Hayek (1963b, pp. 60–61; 1966, pp. 240–41) also believed that an<br />
effective refutation of Keynes would have to begin with a thorough critique of aggregate,<br />
or “macro” economics more generally. Caldwell (1988) suggests another reason: it was<br />
during this time that Hayek was losing faith in equilibrium theory <strong>and</strong> moving toward a<br />
“market process” view of economic activity, making it difficult for him to engage Keynes<br />
on the same terms in which they had debated earlier. McCormick (1992, pp. 99–134)<br />
<strong>and</strong> Blaug (1993, pp. 53–55) propose an entirely different reason: Hayek couldn’t respond<br />
because the Austrian capital theory, on which the cycle theory was built, was simply wrong.
178 <br />
suffered a dramatic reversal. First, the Austrian theory of capital, an integral<br />
part of the business-cycle theory, came under attack from the Italianborn<br />
Cambridge economist Piero Sraffa <strong>and</strong> the American Frank Knight,<br />
while the cycle theory itself was forgotten amid the enthusiasm for the<br />
General eory. Second, beginning with Hayek’s move to London <strong>and</strong><br />
continuing until the early 1940s, the Austrian economists left Vienna for<br />
personal <strong>and</strong> then for political reasons, so that a school ceased to exist<br />
there as such. 9 Mises left Vienna in 1934 for Geneva <strong>and</strong> then New York,<br />
where he continued to work in isolation; Hayek remained at the LSE until<br />
1950, when he joined the Committee on Social ought at the University<br />
of Chicago. Other Austrians of Hayek’s generation became prominent in<br />
the US—Gottfried Haberler at Harvard, Fritz Machlup <strong>and</strong> Oskar Morgenstern<br />
at Princeton, Paul Rosenstein-Rodan at MIT—but their work no<br />
longer seemed to show distinct traces of the tradition founded by Menger.<br />
At Chicago, Hayek again found himself among a dazzling group: the<br />
economics department, led by Knight, Milton Friedman, <strong>and</strong> later George<br />
Stigler, was one of the best anywhere, <strong>and</strong> Aaron Director at the law school<br />
soon set up the first law <strong>and</strong> economics program. 10 But economic theory,<br />
in particular its style of reasoning, was rapidly changing; Paul Samuelson’s<br />
Foundations had appeared in 1947, establishing physics as the science for<br />
economics to imitate, <strong>and</strong> Friedman’s 1953 essay on “positive economics”<br />
set a new st<strong>and</strong>ard for economic method. In addition, Hayek had ceased<br />
to work on economic theory, concentrating instead on psychology, philosophy,<br />
<strong>and</strong> politics, <strong>and</strong> Austrian economics entered a prolonged eclipse. 11<br />
Important work in the Austrian tradition was done during this period<br />
by Rothbard (1956, 1962, 1963a,b), Kirzner (1963, 1966, 1973), <strong>and</strong><br />
Lachmann (1956), but at least publicly, the Austrian tradition lay mostly<br />
dormant.<br />
9 On the emigration of the Austrian economists see Craver (1986).<br />
10 However, at Chicago Hayek was considered something of an outsider; his post was<br />
with the Committee on Social ought, not the economics department, <strong>and</strong> his salary was<br />
paid by a private foundation, the William Volker Fund (the same organization that paid<br />
Mises’s salary as a visiting professor at New York University).<br />
11 By this time, Hayek (1994, p. 126) said, “I had . .. become somewhat stale as an<br />
economist <strong>and</strong> felt much out of sympathy with the direction in which economics was<br />
developing. ough I had still regarded the work I had done during the 1940s on scientific<br />
method, the history of ideas, <strong>and</strong> political theory as temporary excursions into another<br />
field, I found it difficult to return to systematic teaching of economic theory <strong>and</strong> felt it<br />
rather as a release that I was not forced to do so by my teaching duties.”
179<br />
When the 1974 Nobel Prize in economics went to Hayek, interest in<br />
the Austrian school was suddenly <strong>and</strong> unexpectedly revived. While this<br />
was not the first event of the so-called “Austrian revival,” the memorable<br />
South Royalton conference having taken place earlier the same year, the<br />
rediscovery of Hayek by the economics profession was nonetheless a decisive<br />
event in the renaissance of Austrian economics. 12 Hayek’s writings<br />
were taught to new generations, <strong>and</strong> Hayek himself appeared at the early<br />
Institute for Humane Studies conferences in the mid-1970s. He continued<br />
to write, producing e Fatal Conceit in 1988, at the age of 89. Hayek died<br />
in 1992 in Freiburg, Germany, where he had lived since leaving Chicago<br />
in 1961.<br />
Contributions to economics<br />
Hayek’s legacy in economics is complex. Among mainstream economists,<br />
he is mainly known for his popular e Road to Serfdom (1944) <strong>and</strong> for his<br />
work on knowledge in the 1930s <strong>and</strong> 1940s (Hayek, 1937, 1945). Specialists<br />
in business-cycle theory recognize his early work on industrial fluctuations,<br />
<strong>and</strong> modern information theorists often acknowledge Hayek’s<br />
work on prices as signals, although his conclusions are typically disputed. 13<br />
Hayek’s work is also known in political philosophy (Hayek, 1960), legal<br />
theory (Hayek, 1973–79), <strong>and</strong> psychology (Hayek, 1952b). Within<br />
the Austrian school of economics, Hayek’s influence, while undeniably<br />
12 e proceedings of the South Royalton conference were published as e Foundations<br />
of Modern Austrian Economics (Dolan, 1976). A follow-up volume appeared two years<br />
later: New Directions in Austrian Economics (Spadaro, 1978). For perspectives on the<br />
Austrian revival see Rothbard (1995), <strong>and</strong> Vaughn (1994). Salerno (1996b) argues that<br />
the Austrian revival should be dated not from 1974, but from 1962–63, when Rothbard<br />
published Man, Economy, <strong>and</strong> State (1962), America’s Great Depression (1963a), <strong>and</strong> What<br />
Has Government Done to Our Money? (1963b), the works that sparked the younger South<br />
Royalton participants’ interest in Austrian economics.<br />
13 Lucas (1977) cites Hayek as a leading exponent of pre-Keynesian business-cycle theory.<br />
Grossman <strong>and</strong> Stiglitz (1976) <strong>and</strong> Grossman (1980; 1989) argue that contrary to<br />
Hayek, market prices are not “sufficient statistics” for changes in tastes <strong>and</strong> technology.<br />
is literature tries to test the “informative content” of price signals, <strong>and</strong> contends that<br />
in general only perfectly competitive prices convey useful information. Farrell <strong>and</strong> Bolton<br />
(1990) claim that Hayek overstates the coordinating properties of decentralized market<br />
exchange. Hayek’s 1945 paper is also frequently cited in the new institutional literature<br />
emphasizing process <strong>and</strong> adaptation, although coordination through markets is seen as<br />
only one type of desirable coordination. See, for example, Williamson (1991c).
180 <br />
immense, has very recently become the subject of some controversy. His<br />
emphasis on spontaneous order <strong>and</strong> his work on complex systems have<br />
been widely influential among many Austrians. Others have preferred to<br />
stress Hayek’s work in technical economics, particularly on capital <strong>and</strong> the<br />
business cycle, citing a tension between some of Hayek’s <strong>and</strong> Mises’s views<br />
on the social order. (While Mises was a rationalist <strong>and</strong> a utilitarian, Hayek<br />
focused on the limits to reason, basing his defense of capitalism on its<br />
ability to use limited knowledge <strong>and</strong> learning by trial <strong>and</strong> error.)<br />
BUSINESS-CYCLE THEORY. Hayek’s writings on capital, money, <strong>and</strong> the<br />
business cycle are widely regarded as his most important contributions to<br />
economics (Hicks, 1967; Machlup, 1976b). Building on Mises’s eory of<br />
Money <strong>and</strong> Credit (1912), Hayek showed how fluctuations in economywide<br />
output <strong>and</strong> employment are related to the economy’s capital structure.<br />
In Prices <strong>and</strong> Production (1931) he introduced the famous “Hayekian<br />
triangles” to illustrate the relationship between the value of capital goods<br />
<strong>and</strong> their place in the temporal sequence of production. Because production<br />
takes time, factors of production must be committed in the present<br />
for making final goods that will have value only in the future after they<br />
are sold. However, capital is heterogeneous. As capital goods are used<br />
in production, they are transformed from general-purpose materials <strong>and</strong><br />
components to intermediate products specific to particular final goods.<br />
Consequently, these assets cannot be easily redeployed to alternative uses<br />
if dem<strong>and</strong>s for final goods change. e central macroeconomic problem in<br />
a modern capital-using economy is thus one of intertemporal coordination:<br />
how can the allocation of resources between capital <strong>and</strong> consumer goods be<br />
aligned with consumers’ preferences between present <strong>and</strong> future consumption?<br />
In e Pure eory of Capital (1941), perhaps his most ambitious<br />
work, Hayek describes how the economy’s structure of production depends<br />
on the characteristics of capital goods—durability, complementarity, substitutability,<br />
specificity, <strong>and</strong> so on. is structure can be described by the<br />
various “investment periods” of inputs, an extension of Böhm-Bawerk’s<br />
notion of “roundaboutness,” the degree to which production takes up resources<br />
over time. 14<br />
14 Hayek ultimately rejected Böhm-Bawerk’s “average period of production” as a useful<br />
concept, though he had used it earlier in Prices <strong>and</strong> Production (1931). See Hayek (1994),<br />
p. 141, <strong>and</strong> White (1996)
181<br />
In Prices <strong>and</strong> Production (1931) <strong>and</strong> Monetary eory <strong>and</strong> the Trade<br />
Cycle (1933b) Hayek showed how monetary injections, by lowering the<br />
rate of interest below what Mises (following Wicksell) called its “natural<br />
rate,” distort the economy’s intertemporal structure of production. 15 Most<br />
theories of the effects of money on prices <strong>and</strong> output (then <strong>and</strong> since)<br />
consider only the effects of the total money supply on the price level <strong>and</strong> aggregate<br />
output or investment. e Austrian theory, as developed by Mises<br />
<strong>and</strong> Hayek, focuses on the way money enters the economy (“injection<br />
effects”) <strong>and</strong> how this affects relative prices <strong>and</strong> investment in particular<br />
sectors. In Hayek’s framework, investments in some stages of production<br />
are “malinvestments” if they do not help to align the structure of production<br />
to consumers’ intertemporal preferences. e reduction in interest<br />
rates caused by credit expansion directs resources toward capital-intensive<br />
processes <strong>and</strong> early stages of production (whose investment dem<strong>and</strong>s are<br />
more interest-rate elastic), thus “lengthening” the period of production. If<br />
interest rates had fallen because consumers had changed their preferences<br />
to favor future over present consumption, then the longer time structure<br />
of production would have been an appropriate, coordinating response.<br />
A fall in interest rates caused by credit expansion, however, would have<br />
been a “false signal,” causing changes in the structure of production that<br />
do not accord with consumers’ intertemporal preferences. 16 e boom<br />
generated by the increase in investment is artificial. Eventually, market<br />
participants come to realize that there are not enough savings to complete<br />
all the new projects; the boom becomes a bust as these malinvestments<br />
are discovered <strong>and</strong> liquidated. 17 Every artificial boom induced by credit<br />
15 Hayek thought the more important case was when the market interest rate was kept<br />
constant despite a rise in the natural interest rate. In his writings, however, he focused on<br />
the expositionally easier case when credit expansion lowers the market interest rate below<br />
an unchanged natural rate.<br />
16 For most of his career Hayek viewed a system of fractional-reserve banking as inherently<br />
unstable, endorsing a role (in principle) for government stabilization of the money<br />
supply. In later writings, beginning with e Constitution of Liberty (1960) <strong>and</strong> culminating<br />
in Denationalisation of Money (1976), he argued in favor of competition among private<br />
issuers of fiat money. See White (1999).<br />
17 Anticipating modern cycle theories, Hayek (1939b) recognized that the behavior of<br />
the cycle depends on expectations about future price <strong>and</strong> interest rate movements. As<br />
Garrison <strong>and</strong> Kirzner put it (1987, p. 612), for Hayek “prices are signals, not marching<br />
orders.” But Hayek did not believe agents could know the real structure of the economy,<br />
to correctly distinguish movements in interest rates generated by changes in consumers’
182 <br />
expansion, then, is self-reversing. Recovery consists of liquidating the malinvestments<br />
induced by the lowering of interest rates below their natural<br />
levels, thus restoring the time structure of production so that it accords<br />
with consumers’ intertemporal preferences. 18<br />
KNOWLEDGE, PRICES, AND COMPETITION AS A DISCOVERY PROCEDURE.<br />
Hayek’s writings on dispersed knowledge <strong>and</strong> spontaneous order are also<br />
widely known, but more controversial. In “Economics <strong>and</strong> Knowledge”<br />
(1937) <strong>and</strong> “e Use of Knowledge in Society” (1945) Hayek argued<br />
that the central economic problem facing society is not, as is commonly<br />
expressed in textbooks, the allocation of given resources among competing<br />
ends. “It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources<br />
known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance<br />
only those individuals know. Or, to put it briefly, it is a problem of<br />
the utilization of knowledge not given to anyone in its totality” (Hayek,<br />
1945, p. 78).<br />
Much of the knowledge necessary for running the economic system,<br />
Hayek contended, is in the form not of “scientific” or technical knowledge—the<br />
conscious awareness of the rules governing natural <strong>and</strong> social<br />
phenomena—but of “tacit” knowledge, the idiosyncratic, dispersed bits of<br />
underst<strong>and</strong>ing of “circumstances of time <strong>and</strong> place.” is tacit knowledge<br />
is often not consciously known even to those who possess it <strong>and</strong> can never<br />
be communicated to a central authority. e market tends to use this<br />
tacit knowledge through a type of “discovery procedure” (Hayek, 1968b),<br />
by which this information is unknowingly transmitted throughout the<br />
economy as an unintended consequence of individuals’ pursuing their own<br />
ends. 19 Indeed, Hayek’s (1948) distinction between the neoclassical nointertemporal<br />
preferences from those generated by changes in the money supply.<br />
18 For general overviews of Hayek’s macroeconomic views see O’Driscoll (1977), <strong>and</strong><br />
Garrison <strong>and</strong> Kirzner (1987). For expositions <strong>and</strong> interpretations of the Austrian tradecycle<br />
theory, particularly as it relates to modern cycle theories, see Garrison (1978, 2000);<br />
Beilante <strong>and</strong> Garrison (1988); van Zijp (1993); <strong>and</strong> Foss (1994b), pp. 39–55.<br />
19 Hayek’s use of an argument from ignorance as a defense of the market is unusual.<br />
Modern economists typically require assumptions of hyperrationality—complete <strong>and</strong> perfect<br />
information, rational expectations, perfect markets, <strong>and</strong> so on—to justify market allocations<br />
as “efficient.” In the new microeconomics literature on information <strong>and</strong> incentives,<br />
theorists like Joseph Stiglitz have used deviations from these assumptions of perfection to
183<br />
tion of “competition,” identified as a set of equilibrium conditions (number<br />
of market participants, characteristics of the product, <strong>and</strong> so on), <strong>and</strong><br />
the older notion of competition as a rivalrous process, has been widely<br />
influential in Austrian economics (Kirzner, 1973; Machovec, 1995).<br />
For Hayek, market competition generates a particular kind of order—<br />
an order that is the product “of human action but not human design” (a<br />
phrase Hayek borrowed from Adam Smith’s mentor Adam Ferguson). is<br />
“spontaneous order” is a system that comes about through the independent<br />
actions of many individuals, <strong>and</strong> produces overall benefits unintended <strong>and</strong><br />
mostly unforeseen by those whose actions bring it about. To distinguish<br />
between this kind of order <strong>and</strong> that of a deliberate, planned system, Hayek<br />
(1968c) used the Greek terms cosmos for a spontaneous order <strong>and</strong> taxis<br />
for a consciously planned one. 20 Examples of a cosmos include the market<br />
system as a whole, money, the common law, <strong>and</strong> even language. A taxis, by<br />
contrast, is a designed or constructed organization, like a firm or bureau;<br />
these are the “isl<strong>and</strong>s of conscious power in [the] ocean of unconscious<br />
cooperation like lumps of butter coagulating in a pail of buttermilk” (D. H.<br />
Robertson, quoted in Coase, 1937, p. 35). 21<br />
Most commentators view Hayek’s work on knowledge, discovery, <strong>and</strong><br />
competition as an outgrowth of his participation in the socialist calculation<br />
debate of the 1920s <strong>and</strong> 1930s. e socialists erred, in Hayek’s view, in<br />
failing to see that the economy as a whole is necessarily a spontaneous order<br />
<strong>and</strong> can never be deliberately made over in the way that the operators of a<br />
planned order can exercise control over their organization. is is because<br />
planned orders can h<strong>and</strong>le only problems of strictly limited complexity.<br />
Spontaneous orders, by contrast, tend to evolve through a process of natural<br />
selection, <strong>and</strong> therefore do not need to be designed or even understood<br />
by a single mind. 22<br />
reach a verdict of market failure <strong>and</strong> to provide a rationale for government intervention<br />
(see note 13 above). For Hayek, by contrast, the fact that agents are not hyperrational is<br />
an argument not against individual freedom, but against state planning <strong>and</strong> social control.<br />
20 Earlier Hayek (1933b, p. 27) had used “organism” <strong>and</strong> “organization,” borrowed from<br />
Mises, to distinguish the two; this is the distinction cited by Coase in his famous 1937<br />
article, “e Nature of the Firm.”<br />
21 On the relationship between the socialist calculation debate <strong>and</strong> the theory of the firm<br />
see chapter 1 above.<br />
22 For more on spontaneous order see Fehl (1986). Vanberg (1994) argues that Hayek’s
184 <br />
Hayek <strong>and</strong> Austrian economics<br />
Clearly, the Austrian revival owes as much to Hayek as to anyone. But<br />
are Hayek’s writings really “Austrian economics”—part of a separate, recognizable<br />
tradition—or should we regard them, instead, as an original,<br />
deeply personal, contribution? 23 Some observers charge that Hayek’s later<br />
work, particularly after he began to turn away from technical economics,<br />
shows more influence of his friend Sir Karl Popper than of Carl Menger or<br />
Mises: one critic speaks of “Hayek I” <strong>and</strong> “Hayek II”; another writes on<br />
“Hayek’s Transformation.” 24<br />
It is true that Popper had a significant impact on Hayek’s mature<br />
thought. Of greater interest is the precise nature of Hayek’s relationship<br />
with Mises. Undoubtedly, no economist has had a greater impact<br />
on Hayek’s thinking than Mises—not even Wieser, from whom Hayek<br />
learned his craft but who died in 1927 when Hayek was still a young<br />
man. In addition, Mises clearly considered Hayek the brightest of his<br />
generation. 25 Yet, as Hayek (1978) noted, he was from the beginning<br />
always something less than a pure follower: “Although I do owe [Mises]<br />
a decisive stimulus at a crucial point of my intellectual development, <strong>and</strong><br />
continuous inspiration through a decade, I have perhaps most profited<br />
from his teaching because I was not initially his student at the university,<br />
an innocent young man who took his word for gospel, but came to him<br />
as a trained economist, versed in a parallel branch of Austrian economics<br />
notion of spontaneous order via group selection is incompatible with methodological<br />
individualism.<br />
23 Wieser’s have generally been considered a personal contribution, by Hayek himself<br />
<strong>and</strong> others. For a contrary view, see Ekelund (1986).<br />
24 For Hayeks I <strong>and</strong> II see Hutchison (1981), pp. 210–19; for the “transformation” see<br />
Caldwell (1988). e secondary literature contains some debate about whether Hayek’s<br />
1937 article “Economics <strong>and</strong> Knowledge” represents a decisive break with Mises in favor of<br />
a Popperian “falsificationist” approach, one holding that empirical evidence can be used to<br />
falsify a theory (though not to “verify” it by induction). For the case that 1937 is a crucial<br />
turning point see Hutchison (1981, p. 215) <strong>and</strong> Caldwell (1988, p. 528); for the reverse<br />
see Gray (1984, pp. 16–21) <strong>and</strong> Garrison <strong>and</strong> Kirzner (1987, p. 610). Hayek (1992,<br />
pp. 55–56; 1994, pp. 72–74) himself supported the former interpretation, maintaining<br />
that it was indeed Mises he had hoped to persuade in the 1937 article. If true, Hayek’s<br />
attempt was remarkably subtle, for Mises apparently welcomed Hayek’s argument, unaware<br />
that it was directed at him.<br />
25 Margit von Mises (1984, p. 133) recalls of her husb<strong>and</strong>’s seminar in New York that he<br />
“met every new student hopeful that one of them might develop into a second Hayek.”
185<br />
[the Wieser branch] from which he gradually, but never completely, won<br />
me over.”<br />
Much has been written on Hayek’s <strong>and</strong> Mises’s views on the socialist<br />
calculation debate. e issue is whether a socialist economy is “impossible,”<br />
as Mises charged in 1920, or simply less efficient or more difficult to<br />
implement. Hayek (1992, p. 127) maintained later that Mises’s “central<br />
thesis was not, as it is sometimes misleadingly put, that socialism is impossible,<br />
but that it cannot achieve an efficient utilization of resources.” at<br />
interpretation is itself subject to dispute. Hayek is arguing here against the<br />
st<strong>and</strong>ard view on economic calculation, found for instance in Schumpeter<br />
(1942, pp. 172–186) or Bergson (1948). is view holds that Mises’s original<br />
statement of the impossibility of economic calculation under socialism<br />
was refuted by Oskar Lange, Fred Taylor, <strong>and</strong> Abba Lerner, <strong>and</strong> that later<br />
modifications by Hayek <strong>and</strong> Robbins amounted to an admission that a<br />
socialist economy is possible in theory but difficult in practice because<br />
knowledge is decentralized <strong>and</strong> incentives are weak. Hayek’s response in<br />
the cited text, that Mises’s actual position has been exaggerated, receives<br />
support from the primary revisionist historian of the calculation debate,<br />
Don Lavoie, who states that the “central arguments advanced by Hayek<br />
<strong>and</strong> Robbins did not constitute a ‘retreat’ from Mises, but rather a clarification<br />
directing the challenge to the later versions of central planning. ...<br />
Although comments by both Hayek <strong>and</strong> Robbins about computational<br />
difficulties of the [later approaches] were responsible for misleading interpretations<br />
of their arguments, in fact their main contributions were fully<br />
consistent with Mises’s challenge” (Lavoie, 1985, p. 20). Kirzner (1988a)<br />
similarly contends that Mises’s <strong>and</strong> Hayek’s positions should be viewed<br />
together as an early attempt to elaborate the Austrian “<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ialdiscovery”<br />
view of the market process. Salerno (1990a) argues, by contrast,<br />
in favor of the traditional view—that Mises’s original calculation problem<br />
is different from the discovery-process problem emphasized by Lavoie <strong>and</strong><br />
Kirzner. 26<br />
Furthermore, Hayek’s later emphasis on group selection <strong>and</strong> spontaneous<br />
order is not shared by Mises, although there are elements of this<br />
line of thought in Menger. A clue to this difference is in Hayek’s (1978)<br />
26 Hayek’s writings on socialist economic calculation are collected in Hayek (1997). See<br />
Caldwell (1997) for an overview.
186 <br />
statement that “Mises himself was still much more a child of the rationalist<br />
tradition of the Enlightenment <strong>and</strong> of continental, rather than of English,<br />
liberalism ... than I am myself.” is is a reference to the “two types of<br />
liberalism” to which Hayek frequently refers: the continental rationalist or<br />
utilitarian tradition, which emphasizes reason <strong>and</strong> man’s ability to shape<br />
his surroundings, <strong>and</strong> the English common-law tradition, which stresses<br />
the limits to reason <strong>and</strong> the “spontaneous” forces of evolution. 27<br />
Recently, the relationship between Mises <strong>and</strong> Hayek has become a fullfledged<br />
“de-homogenization” debate. Salerno (1990a,b, 1993, 1994a) <strong>and</strong><br />
Rothbard (1991, 1995) see Hayek’s emphasis on knowledge <strong>and</strong> discovery<br />
as substantially different from Mises’s emphasis on purposeful human<br />
action. Salerno (1993), for example, argues that there are two str<strong>and</strong>s<br />
of modern Austrian economics, both descended from Menger. One,<br />
the Wieser–Hayek str<strong>and</strong>, focuses on dispersed knowledge <strong>and</strong> the price<br />
system as a device for communicating knowledge. Another, the Böhm-<br />
Bawerk–Mises str<strong>and</strong>, focuses on monetary calculation (or “appraisal,”<br />
meaning anticipation of future prices) based on existing money prices.<br />
Kirzner (1994, 1995, 1996, 1997) <strong>and</strong> Yeager (1994, 1995) argue, by<br />
contrast, that the differences between Hayek <strong>and</strong> Mises are more matters<br />
of emphasis <strong>and</strong> language than substance. 28<br />
27 For more on the complex <strong>and</strong> subtle Mises–Hayek relationship see Klein (1992,<br />
pp. 7–13) <strong>and</strong> the references cited therein.<br />
28 Kirzner (1995, p. 1244), for example, writes that Mises’s <strong>and</strong> Hayek’s critiques of<br />
socialism “are simply different ways of expounding the same basic, Austrian, insight.... To<br />
fail to see the common economic underst<strong>and</strong>ing shared by Mises <strong>and</strong> Hayek, is to have been<br />
needlessly misled by superficial differences in exposition <strong>and</strong> emphasis. To compound this<br />
failure by perceiving a clash, among modern Austrians, of ‘Hayekians’ versus ‘Misesians,’ is<br />
to convert an interpretive failure into a dogmengeschichtliche nightmare.” For more on the<br />
de-homogenization debate see Herbener (1991, 1996), Salerno (1994a, 1996b), Hoppe<br />
(1996), Boettke (1998), <strong>and</strong> Yeager (1995). Rothbard (1994, p. 559) identifies three “distinctive<br />
<strong>and</strong> often clashing paradigms within Austrian economics: Misesian praxeology; the<br />
Hayek–Kirzner emphasis on the market as transmission of knowledge <strong>and</strong> coordination of<br />
plans—rather than the Misesian emphasis on continuing coordination of prices; <strong>and</strong> the<br />
ultra-subjectivism of [Ludwig] Lachmann.”<br />
Interestingly, Hayek himself sought to de-homogenize his work from that of free-market<br />
thinkers with whom he disagreed methodologically. In an interview in the 1980s he<br />
described Milton Friedman as a “logical positivist,” who “believe[s] economic phenomena<br />
can be explained as macrophenomena, that you can ascertain cause <strong>and</strong> effects from<br />
aggregates <strong>and</strong> averages [Friedman] is on most things, general market problems, sound.<br />
I want him on my side. You know, one of the things I often have publicly said is that one
187<br />
Regardless, there is widespread agreement that Hayek ranks among the<br />
greatest members of the Austrian school, <strong>and</strong> among the leading economists<br />
of the twentieth century. His work continues to be influential in<br />
business-cycle theory, comparative economic systems, political <strong>and</strong> social<br />
philosophy, legal theory, <strong>and</strong> even cognitive psychology. Hayek’s writings<br />
are not always easy to follow—he describes himself as “puzzler” or “muddler”<br />
rather than a “master of his subject”—<strong>and</strong> this may have contributed<br />
to the variety of interpretations his work has aroused. 29 Partly for this<br />
reason, Hayek remains one of the most intriguing intellectual figures of<br />
our time.<br />
<br />
G Williamson <strong>and</strong> the Austrians †<br />
Oliver Williamson’s 2009 Nobel Prize, shared with Elinor Ostrom, is great<br />
news for Austrians. Williamson’s pathbreaking analysis of how alternative<br />
organizational forms—markets, hierarchies, <strong>and</strong> hybrids, as he calls<br />
them—emerge, perform, <strong>and</strong> adapt, has defined the modern field of organizational<br />
economics. Williamson is no Austrian, but he is sympathetic to<br />
Austrian themes (particularly the Hayekian underst<strong>and</strong>ing of tacit knowledge<br />
<strong>and</strong> market competition), his concept of “asset specificity” enhances<br />
<strong>and</strong> extends the Austrian theory of capital, <strong>and</strong> his theory of firm boundaries<br />
has almost single-h<strong>and</strong>edly displaced the benchmark model of perfect<br />
competition from important parts of industrial organization <strong>and</strong> antitrust<br />
economics. He is also a pragmatic, careful, <strong>and</strong> practical economist who<br />
is concerned, first <strong>and</strong> foremost, with real-world economic phenomena,<br />
of the things I most regret is not having returned to a criticism of Keynes’s treatise, but it<br />
is as much true of not having criticized Milton’s [Essays in] Positive Economics, which in a<br />
way is quite as dangerous a book.” Quoted in Hayek (1994), pp. 144–45.<br />
29 On puzzlers <strong>and</strong> masters of their subjects see Hayek (1975). Along with himself,<br />
Hayek named Wieser <strong>and</strong> Frank Knight as representative puzzlers, <strong>and</strong> Böhm-Bawerk,<br />
Joseph Schumpeter, <strong>and</strong> Jacob Viner as representative masters of their subjects. As Hayek<br />
(1975, p. 51) recalled, “I owed whatever worthwhile new ideas I ever had to not being able<br />
to remember what every competent specialist is supposed to have at his fingertips. Whenever<br />
I saw a new light on something it was as the result of a painful effort to reconstruct an<br />
argument which most competent economists would effortlessly <strong>and</strong> instantly reproduce.”<br />
† Published originally on Mises.org, October 14, 2009.
188 <br />
choosing clarity <strong>and</strong> relevance over formal mathematical elegance. For<br />
these <strong>and</strong> many other reasons, his work deserves careful study by Austrians.<br />
Opening the black box<br />
In economics textbooks, the “firm” is a production function or production<br />
possibilities set, a “black box” that transforms inputs into outputs.<br />
Given the existing state of technology, the prices of inputs, <strong>and</strong> a dem<strong>and</strong><br />
schedule, the firm maximizes money profits subject to the constraint that<br />
its production plans must be technologically feasible. e firm is modeled<br />
as a single actor, facing a series of uncomplicated decisions: what level of<br />
output to produce, how much of each factor to hire, <strong>and</strong> the like. ese<br />
“decisions,” of course, are not really decisions at all; they are trivial mathematical<br />
calculations, implicit in the underlying data. In short: the firm is<br />
a set of cost curves, <strong>and</strong> the “theory of the firm” is a calculus problem.<br />
Williamson attacks this conception of the firm, what he calls the “firmas-production-function”<br />
view. Building on Coase’s (1937) transactioncost<br />
or “contractual” approach, Williamson argues that the firm is best<br />
regarded as a “governance structure,” a means of organizing a set of contractual<br />
relations among individual agents. e firm, then, consists of an<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>-owner, the tangible assets he owns, <strong>and</strong> a set of employment<br />
relationships—a realistic <strong>and</strong> thoroughly Austrian view. Williamson emphasizes<br />
“asset specificity”—the degree to which resources are specialized<br />
to particular trading partners—as the key determinant of the firm’s boundaries,<br />
defined as the set of transactions that are internal to the firm (or, put<br />
differently, the set of assets owned by the <strong>entrepreneur</strong>). More generally, he<br />
holds that <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s will tend to choose the form of organization—a<br />
loose network of small firms, trading in the open market; a franchise network,<br />
alliance, or joint-venture; or a large, vertically integrated firm—that<br />
best fits the circumstances.<br />
Some Austrians have argued, following Alchian <strong>and</strong> Demsetz (1972),<br />
that Coase <strong>and</strong> Williamson wrongly claim that firms are not part of the<br />
market, that <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s substitute coercion for voluntary consent, <strong>and</strong><br />
that corporate hierarchies are somehow inconsistent with the free market<br />
(e.g., Ellig <strong>and</strong> Gable, 1993; Minkler, 1993a; Langlois, 1994a; Mathews,<br />
1998). I think this is a misreading of Coase <strong>and</strong> of Williamson. It is true<br />
that Coase speaks of firms “superseding” the market <strong>and</strong> <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s<br />
“suppressing” the price mechanism, while Williamson says firms emerge
189<br />
to overcome “market failure.” But they do not mean that the firm is outside<br />
the market in some general sense, that the market system as a whole<br />
is inefficient relative to government planning, or anything of the sort.<br />
Moreover, Williamson does not use the term “market failure” in the usual<br />
left-interventionist sense, but means simply that real-world markets are not<br />
“perfect” as in the perfectly competitive general-equilibrium model, which<br />
explains why firms exist. Indeed, Williamson’s work on vertical integration<br />
can be read as a celebration of the market. Not only are firms part of<br />
the market, broadly conceived, but the variety of organizational forms we<br />
observe in markets—including large, vertically integrated enterprises—is<br />
a testament to the creativity of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s in figuring out the best way<br />
to organize production.<br />
What about Williamson’s claim that markets, hierarchies, <strong>and</strong> hybrids<br />
are alternative forms of governance? Does he mean that firms <strong>and</strong> hybrid<br />
organizations are not part of the market? No. Coase <strong>and</strong> Williamson are<br />
talking about a completely different issue, namely the distinction between<br />
types of contracts or business relationships within the larger market context.<br />
e issue is simply whether the employment relationship is different<br />
from, say, a spot-market trade or a procurement arrangement with an independent<br />
supplier. Alchian <strong>and</strong> Demsetz (1972) famously argued that there<br />
is no essential difference between the two—both are voluntary contractual<br />
relationships, there is no “coercion” involved, no power, etc. Coase<br />
(1937), Williamson, Herbert Simon (1951), Grossman <strong>and</strong> Hart (1986),<br />
my own work, <strong>and</strong> most of the modern literature on the firm argues that<br />
there are important, qualitative differences. Coase <strong>and</strong> Simon emphasize<br />
“fiat,” by which they mean simply that employment contracts are, within<br />
limits, open-ended. e employer does not negotiate with the employee<br />
about performing task A, B, or C on a given day; he simply instructs him to<br />
do it. Of course, the employment contract itself is negotiated on the labor<br />
market, just as any contract is negotiated. But, once signed, it is qualitatively<br />
different from a contract that says “independent contractor X will<br />
perform task A on day 1.” An employment relationship is characterized by<br />
what Simon (1951) called the “zone of authority.” Williamson emphasizes<br />
the legal distinction, namely that disputes between employers <strong>and</strong> employees<br />
are settled differently from disputes between firms, between firms <strong>and</strong><br />
customers, between firms <strong>and</strong> independent suppliers or distributors, etc.<br />
Grossman <strong>and</strong> Hart, <strong>and</strong> my own work with Nicolai Foss, emphasize the<br />
distinction between asset owners <strong>and</strong> non-owners. If I hire you to work
190 <br />
with my machine, I hold residual control <strong>and</strong> income rights to the use of<br />
the machine that you do not have, <strong>and</strong> thus your ability to use the machine<br />
as you see fit is limited. If you own your own machine, <strong>and</strong> I hire you to<br />
produce services with that machine, then you (in this case, an independent<br />
contractor) hold these residual income <strong>and</strong> control rights, <strong>and</strong> this affects<br />
many aspects of our relationship.<br />
While Coase, Simon, Hart, <strong>and</strong> other organizational economists do<br />
not draw explicitly on the Austrians, this distinction can also be interpreted<br />
in terms of Menger’s distinction between orders <strong>and</strong> organizations,<br />
or Hayek’s cosmos <strong>and</strong> taxis. Coase <strong>and</strong> Williamson are simply saying that<br />
the firm is a taxis, the market a cosmos. is does not deny that there<br />
are “unplanned” or “spontaneous” aspects of the internal organization of<br />
firms, or that there is purpose, reason, the use of monetary calculation,<br />
etc., in the market.<br />
Asset specificity <strong>and</strong> Austrian capital theory<br />
As we have seen in prior chapters, the black-box approach to the firm that<br />
dominated neoclassical economics omits the critical organizational details<br />
of production. Production is treated as a one-stage process, in which factors<br />
are instantly converted into final goods, rather than a complex, multistage<br />
process unfolding through time <strong>and</strong> employing rounds of intermediate<br />
goods. Capital is treated as a homogeneous factor of production.<br />
Williamson, by contrast, emphasizes that resources are heterogeneous, often<br />
specialized, <strong>and</strong> frequently costly to redeploy. What he calls asset<br />
specificity refers to “durable investments that are undertaken in support<br />
of particular transactions, the opportunity cost of which investments are<br />
much lower in best alternative uses or by alternative users should the original<br />
transaction be prematurely terminated” (Williamson, 1985, p. 55).<br />
is could describe a variety of relationship-specific investments, including<br />
both specialized physical <strong>and</strong> human capital, along with intangibles such<br />
as R&D <strong>and</strong> firm-specific knowledge or capabilities. Like Klein, et al.<br />
(1978), Williamson emphasizes the “holdup” problem that can follow such<br />
investments, <strong>and</strong> the role of contractual safeguards in securing the returns<br />
(what Klein, et al. call “quasi-rents”) to those assets.<br />
Austrian capital theory focuses on a different type of specificity, namely<br />
the extent to which resources are specialized to particular places in the time-
191<br />
structure of production. Menger famously characterized goods in terms of<br />
“orders”: goods of lowest order are those consumed directly. Tools <strong>and</strong><br />
machines used to produce those consumption goods are of a higher order,<br />
<strong>and</strong> the capital goods used to produce the tools <strong>and</strong> machines are of an<br />
even higher order. Building on his theory that the value of all goods is<br />
determined by their ability to satisfy consumer wants (i.e. their marginal<br />
utility), Menger showed that the value of the higher-order goods is given or<br />
‘imputed’ by the value of the lower-order goods they produce. Moreover,<br />
because certain capital goods are themselves produced by other, higherorder<br />
capital goods, it follows that capital goods are not identical, at least<br />
by the time they are employed in the production process. e claim is<br />
not that there is no substitution among capital goods, but that the degree<br />
of substitution is limited; as Lachmann (1956) put it, capital goods are<br />
characterized by “multiple specificity.” Some substitution is possible, but<br />
only at a cost.<br />
Mises <strong>and</strong> Hayek used this concept of specificity to develop their theory<br />
of the business cycle. Williamson’s asset specificity focuses on specialization<br />
not to a particular production process, but to a particular set of<br />
trading partners. His aim is to explain the business relationship between<br />
these partners (arms-length transaction, formal contract, vertical integration,<br />
etc.). e Austrians, in other words, focus on assets that are specific<br />
to particular uses, while Williamson focuses on assets that are specific to<br />
particular users. But there are obvious parallels, <strong>and</strong> opportunities for gains<br />
from trade. Austrian business-cycle theory can be enhanced by considering<br />
how vertical integration <strong>and</strong> long-term supply relations can mitigate, or<br />
exacerbate, the effects of credit expansion on the economy’s structure of<br />
production. Likewise, transaction cost economics can benefit from considering<br />
not only the time-structure of production, but also Kirzner’s (1966)<br />
refinement that defines capital assets in terms of subjective, individual<br />
production plans, plans that are formulated <strong>and</strong> continually revised by<br />
profit-seeking <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s (<strong>and</strong> Edith Penrose’s, 1959, concept of the<br />
firm’s “subjective opportunity set”).<br />
Vertical integration, strategizing, <strong>and</strong> economizing<br />
e general thrust of Williamson’s teaching on vertical integration is not<br />
that markets somehow “fail,” but that they succeed, in rich, complex,
192 <br />
<strong>and</strong> often unpredictable ways. A basic conclusion of transaction cost economics<br />
is that vertical mergers, even when there are no obvious technological<br />
synergies, may enhance efficiency by reducing governance costs. Hence<br />
Williamson (1985, p. 19) takes issue with what he calls the “inhospitality<br />
tradition” in antitrust—namely, that firms engaged in non st<strong>and</strong>ard<br />
business practices like vertical integration, customer <strong>and</strong> territorial restrictions,<br />
tie ins, franchising, <strong>and</strong> so on, must be seeking monopoly gains.<br />
Indeed, antitrust authorities have become more lenient in evaluating such<br />
practices, evaluating them on a case-by-case basis rather than imposing<br />
per se restrictions on particular forms of conduct. While this change may<br />
reflect sensitivity to Chicago School claims that vertical integration <strong>and</strong><br />
restraints need not reduce competition, rather than to claims that such arrangements<br />
provide contractual safeguards (Joskow, 1991, pp. 79–80), the<br />
Chicago position on vertical restraints relies largely (though not explicitly)<br />
on transaction-cost reasoning (Meese, 1997). In this sense, Williamson’s<br />
work can be construed as a frontal attack on the perfectly competitive<br />
model, particularly when used as a benchmark case for antitrust <strong>and</strong> regulatory<br />
policy.<br />
Likewise, Williamson argues that for managers, “economizing” is the<br />
best form of “strategizing.” e literature on business strategy, following<br />
Porter (1980), has tended to emphasize “market-power” as the source of<br />
firm-level competitive advantage. Building directly on the old structure–<br />
conduct–performance model of industrial organization, Porter <strong>and</strong> his followers<br />
argued that firms should seek to limit rivalry by enacting entry<br />
barriers, forming coalitions, limiting the bargaining power of buyers <strong>and</strong><br />
suppliers, etc. Williamson challenges this strategic positioning approach<br />
in an influential 1991 article, “Strategizing, Economizing, <strong>and</strong> Economic<br />
Organization,” Williamson (1991d) where he claims that managers should<br />
focus on increasing economic efficiency, by choosing appropriate governance<br />
structures, rather than increasing their market power. Here again,<br />
moves by firms to integrate, cooperate with upstream <strong>and</strong> downstream<br />
partners, form alliances, <strong>and</strong> such are not only profitable for the firms, but<br />
for consumers as well. Deviations from perfect competition are, in this<br />
sense, part of the market process of allocating resources to their highestvalued<br />
uses, all to the benefit (as Mises emphasized) of the consumer.
193<br />
Coda<br />
On a personal level, Williamson is friendly <strong>and</strong> sympathetic to Austrians<br />
<strong>and</strong> to Austrian concerns. He encourages students to read the Austrians<br />
(particularly Hayek, whom he cites often). Williamson chaired my PhD<br />
dissertation committee, <strong>and</strong> one of my first published papers, “Economic<br />
Calculation <strong>and</strong> the Limits of Organization,” was originally presented in<br />
Williamson’s Institutional Analysis Workshop at Berkeley. Williamson did<br />
not buy my argument about the distinction between calculation <strong>and</strong> incentive<br />
problems—he maintained (<strong>and</strong> continues to maintain) that agency<br />
costs, not Mises’s calculation argument, explain the failure of central planning—but<br />
his reactions helped me shape my argument <strong>and</strong> refined my<br />
underst<strong>and</strong>ing of the core Misesian <strong>and</strong> Hayekian literatures. (Also, the<br />
great Sovietologist Alec Nove, visiting Berkeley that semester, happened<br />
to be in the audience that day, <strong>and</strong> gave me a number of references <strong>and</strong><br />
counter-arguments.) Williamson, knowing my interest in the Austrians,<br />
once suggested that I write a dissertation on the Ordo School, the influence<br />
of Hayek on Eucken <strong>and</strong> Röpke, <strong>and</strong> the role of ideas in shaping economic<br />
policy. He cautioned me that writing on such a topic would not be an<br />
advantage on the job market, but urged me to follow my passions, not to<br />
follow the crowd. I ended up writing on more prosaic topics but never<br />
forgot that advice, <strong>and</strong> have passed it along to my own students.
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Index<br />
A<br />
agency theory, about, 35, 45<br />
alertness, in <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, 96, 102<br />
American Economic Association (AEA),<br />
167<br />
ARPANET, 153<br />
asset specificity, see also heterogeneous<br />
capital; heterogeneous resources or<br />
assets<br />
capital heterogeneity, 72<br />
Williamson on, 5, 190<br />
attributes<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, 116<br />
heterogeneous capital, 75–80, 111<br />
Austrian economics, see also price theory<br />
capital heterogeneity, 75–80<br />
collapse of the Austrian school in<br />
Austria, 178<br />
corporate governance, 28–35<br />
divestitures, 52<br />
economic calculations of <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s,<br />
32–35<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, 29–31, 68, 94, 111<br />
financiers as <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s, 45–48<br />
firms, 6, 18–21, 38<br />
Hayek <strong>and</strong>, 182–187<br />
internal capital markets, 40–48<br />
Menger’s contribution to, 174<br />
Rothbard <strong>and</strong> economic calculation<br />
under socialism, 16<br />
<strong>and</strong> Williamson, 187–193<br />
autonomy, compared to freedom <strong>and</strong><br />
liberty in the digital revolution,<br />
159<br />
B<br />
Benkler, Yochai, e Wealth of Networks,<br />
157–162<br />
Berle–Means corporations, 43<br />
Bhidé, Amar, on internal capital markets,<br />
41<br />
bibliography, 195–234<br />
black box model<br />
about, 3, 24<br />
opportunities as, 106<br />
shmoo capital, 71<br />
Williamson on, 188–190<br />
boundaries, firms, 84<br />
broken window fallacy, Internet<br />
technology, 156<br />
bureaucracy, 44<br />
business cycle<br />
Hayek’s contribution to theory of, 176,<br />
180–182<br />
<strong>and</strong> management theory, 169–171<br />
235
236 <br />
C<br />
calculation, versus incentives in<br />
determining firm size, 9–13<br />
capital, see also asset specificity;<br />
heterogeneous capital<br />
Austrian economics, 75<br />
theory of the firm, 71–75<br />
Williamson on theory of, 190<br />
capital markets<br />
corporate governance, 35–37<br />
internal capital markets, 40–48<br />
Mises on, 46<br />
<strong>capitalist</strong>-<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s, Mises on, 30<br />
<strong>capitalist</strong>s<br />
corporate governance, 25<br />
relationship to managers, 35<br />
case probability, 118, 121<br />
centrally planned economies, see socialist<br />
theories<br />
class probability, 118, 121<br />
Coase, Ronald<br />
compatibility with Austrian economics,<br />
18<br />
Rothbard’s Coasian framework on firm<br />
size, 17<br />
on transaction costs, 4<br />
Coasian framework<br />
about, 27<br />
Rothbard consistency with, 34<br />
collective action, theory of, 115<br />
collectives, holding property rights, 159<br />
competition, Hayek’s contribution to<br />
concept of, 182<br />
conglomerates, unrelated diversification,<br />
51<br />
contracts, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial function, 90<br />
contractual approach, corporate<br />
governance, 27<br />
contractual framework, 27<br />
cooperatives, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial teams, 114<br />
corporate control, see market for corporate<br />
control<br />
corporate governance, 23–48<br />
Austrian economics, 28–35, 37–48<br />
capital markets, 35–37<br />
contractual approach, 27<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>-promoter <strong>and</strong> <strong>capitalist</strong><br />
approaches, 25–26<br />
traditional approach, 24<br />
Williamson on, 189<br />
corporations, see corporate governance;<br />
firms; multidivisional (M-form)<br />
corporations<br />
costs, see also transaction costs<br />
agency costs, 36<br />
transaction costs, 4<br />
creation approach, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, 104<br />
D<br />
decentralization, about, 89<br />
digital revolution, Benkler on, 157<br />
discovery approach, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, 104<br />
diversification, <strong>and</strong> internal capital<br />
markets, 42<br />
divestitures<br />
predictable mistakes hypothesis, 50–52,<br />
60–65<br />
reasons for, 57–59<br />
dummy variables, in research on mergers<br />
<strong>and</strong> divestitures, 62<br />
E<br />
economic value added (EVA), 39<br />
economizing, Williamson on, 191<br />
efficiency, predictable mistakes hypothesis,<br />
57–60<br />
empire building hypothesis, divestitures,<br />
60, 64<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>-promoter, corporate<br />
governance, 25<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial action<br />
applications of, 113–115<br />
<strong>and</strong> heterogeneous capital <strong>and</strong><br />
economic organization, 109–113<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial market process, about, 58<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial teams, 114<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s, as financiers, 45–48
237<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, see also<br />
<strong>capitalist</strong>-<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s;<br />
predictable mistakes hypothesis<br />
Austrian economics, 29–31, 68<br />
heterogeneous capital, 79<br />
Knightian concept of, 19<br />
as an occupational choice, 89<br />
occupational, structural, <strong>and</strong> functional,<br />
95–99<br />
as opportunity identification, 99–109<br />
productive <strong>and</strong> destructive, 85<br />
profit <strong>and</strong> loss, 54–57<br />
risk <strong>and</strong> uncertainty, 122<br />
sources for theory of, 67<br />
equilibrium<br />
applied to the digital revolution, 162<br />
price theory, 129, 135–150<br />
EVA (economic value added), 39<br />
exchange, relative costs of external <strong>and</strong><br />
internal, 4<br />
expectations, convergence to equilibrium<br />
in price theory, 139–150<br />
experimental activity, heterogeneous<br />
capital, 79, 81<br />
external exchange, relative cost, 4<br />
F<br />
final state of rest (FSR), 135–139<br />
financial-market <strong>entrepreneur</strong>, see<br />
<strong>capitalist</strong>-<strong>entrepreneur</strong>s<br />
financial markets, see capital markets<br />
financiers, as <strong>entrepreneur</strong>s, 45–48<br />
firms, 1–21, see also black box model;<br />
corporate governance;<br />
multidivisional (M-form)<br />
corporations<br />
Austrian economics, 18–21<br />
boundaries of, 84<br />
as controlled experiments, 82<br />
corporate restructurings, value of, 50<br />
diversification <strong>and</strong> internal capital<br />
markets, 42<br />
divestitures, predictable mistakes<br />
hypothesis, 50–52, 57–59, 60–65<br />
emergence of, 80–83<br />
as investments, 38<br />
output levels, 39<br />
size of, 5–18, 42<br />
theory of, 3, 112<br />
tradeoffs in internal organization, 86<br />
transaction costs, 4<br />
Williamson on, 188–190<br />
fixed costs, allocating, 17<br />
free rider problem, tender offers, 47<br />
freedom, compared to autonomy in the<br />
digital revolution, 159<br />
function activity, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship as, 96<br />
G<br />
general equilibrium theory,<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, 93<br />
GI Bill, 165<br />
governance, see corporate governance<br />
government, see also regulation<br />
aid to education sector, 164, 165<br />
intervention in marketplace: effect on<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial error, 53<br />
role in creating bureaucracy, 44<br />
role in development of the Internet,<br />
153–157<br />
group selection, 185<br />
H<br />
Hayek, F. A.<br />
the innovator, 131, 175–187<br />
on knowledge problem, 32, 182<br />
on leftward <strong>and</strong> rightward leanings in<br />
academia <strong>and</strong> the private sector,<br />
163<br />
on malinvestment, 171<br />
on market socialism, 8<br />
relationship between Austrian <strong>and</strong><br />
neoclassical economics, 146–150<br />
heterogeneous capital, 67–91<br />
attributes, 75–80<br />
opportunity discovery, 109–113<br />
organizing <strong>and</strong> using, 80–87<br />
theory of the firm, 71–75<br />
heterogeneous resources or assets, 170, 190<br />
homogeneity<br />
in economic models, 170<br />
versus heterogeneity, 186
238 <br />
I<br />
incentives, versus calculation in<br />
determining firm size, 9–13<br />
information commons, privatizing, 159<br />
intellectuals, support for socialism,<br />
162–169<br />
internal capital markets, Austrian<br />
economics, 40–48<br />
internal exchange, relative cost, 4<br />
Internet, roles of government <strong>and</strong> market<br />
place, 153–157<br />
investments, firms as, 38<br />
J<br />
judgment<br />
in <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, 69, 97, 109, 123<br />
incomplete markets for, 80<br />
K<br />
Kirzner’s framework<br />
about, 29<br />
capital heterogeneity, 76, 80<br />
on convergence toward equilibrium,<br />
139<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, 96, 105<br />
Knight, Frank H.<br />
as an Austrian framework for firm size,<br />
18<br />
on <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, 98, 103<br />
on judgment, 70<br />
on probability, 118–121<br />
knowledge-based approach to capital<br />
heterogeneity, 73<br />
knowledge problem<br />
convergence to equilibrium in price<br />
theory, 139–150<br />
Hayek’s contribution to concept of, 32,<br />
182<br />
Kreps, David, on the theory of the firm, 4<br />
L<br />
Lachmann, Ludwig M.<br />
contributions to economics, 131<br />
on convergence toward equilibrium,<br />
139<br />
liberty, <strong>and</strong> social production, 158<br />
M<br />
M-form (multidivisional) corporations,<br />
internal capital markets, 40<br />
macroeconomics, homogeneity versus<br />
heterogeneity, 170<br />
malinvestment, Hayek on, 171<br />
management theory<br />
<strong>and</strong> business cycle, 169–171<br />
Mises distinction with<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, 30<br />
Mises on managerial autonomy, 45<br />
role of managers versus <strong>capitalist</strong>s, 35<br />
Manne, Henry, on market for corporate<br />
control, 36<br />
market, role in development of the<br />
Internet, 153–157<br />
market for corporate control<br />
about, 36<br />
regulation of, 52<br />
market socialism<br />
about, 7<br />
Mises on, 11, 23<br />
mathematical solution, see market<br />
socialism<br />
Menger, Carl<br />
on capital heterogeneity, 76<br />
contributions to economics, 133–134,<br />
171–174<br />
price theory, 145<br />
mergers, predictable mistakes hypothesis,<br />
57–60<br />
metaphors, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, 105<br />
Mises, Ludwig von<br />
on calculation debate, 6<br />
on divestitures, 53<br />
on <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, 30, 54, 99<br />
on financial markets, 46<br />
on judgment, 123<br />
on managerial autonomy, 45<br />
on market for corporate control, 37<br />
on market socialism, 23<br />
on probability, 118–121<br />
on the purchasing power of money, 143<br />
relationship between Austrian <strong>and</strong><br />
neoclassical economics, 146–150
239<br />
relationship to Hayek’s thought, 184<br />
on socialism, 10–13, 176<br />
on uncertainty, 122<br />
mistakes, see predictable mistakes<br />
hypothesis<br />
money, purchasing power of, 143<br />
multidivisional (M-form) corporations,<br />
internal capital markets, 40<br />
N<br />
networks, <strong>and</strong> social production <strong>and</strong><br />
private property, 157–162<br />
O<br />
objective opportunities, versus subjective<br />
opportunities, 101–106<br />
occupational choice, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship as,<br />
89, 95<br />
opportunity discovery, 93–116<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial action, applications of,<br />
94, 113–115<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial action, heterogeneous<br />
capital, <strong>and</strong> economic<br />
organization, 109–113<br />
occupational, structural, <strong>and</strong> functional<br />
perspectives on <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship,<br />
95–99<br />
opportunity identification,<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship as, 99–109<br />
opportunity identification,<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship as, 99–109<br />
organization, see also black box model;<br />
corporate governance; firms;<br />
multidivisional (M-form)<br />
corporations<br />
<strong>and</strong> <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial action <strong>and</strong><br />
heterogeneous capital, 109–113<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial action, 113<br />
heterogeneous capital, 80–87<br />
risk <strong>and</strong> uncertainty, 117–124<br />
organizational grind, 109<br />
output levels of firms, in relation to outside<br />
investment opportunities, 39<br />
overhead, allocating, 17<br />
ownership, see property rights<br />
P<br />
packets (Internet), pricing, 155<br />
plain state of rest (PSR), 135–139<br />
predictable mistakes hypothesis, 49–66<br />
divestitures, 60–65<br />
mergers, sell-offs, <strong>and</strong> efficiency, 57–60<br />
profit <strong>and</strong> loss in <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship,<br />
54–57<br />
price-earnings (P/E) ratios, mergers <strong>and</strong><br />
divestitures, 61<br />
price theory, see also transfer prices,<br />
125–151<br />
before 1974, 129–134<br />
equilibrium, 135–150<br />
future directions, 150<br />
Hayek’s contribution to, 181<br />
Menger’s contributions to, 171<br />
Mengerian, 145<br />
socialism <strong>and</strong>, 10<br />
pricing<br />
Internet services, 156<br />
packets on the Internet, 155<br />
Principles, 173<br />
privatizing, information commons, 159<br />
probability, see also uncertainty<br />
Mises <strong>and</strong> Knight on, 118–121<br />
profit <strong>and</strong> loss<br />
defined, 39<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, 54–57<br />
property rights<br />
held by collectives, 159<br />
heterogeneous capital, 73, 78<br />
<strong>and</strong> networks <strong>and</strong> social production,<br />
157–162<br />
PSR (plain state of rest), 135–139<br />
purchasing power of money, 143<br />
R<br />
radical uncertainty, 145<br />
references, 195–234<br />
regulation, market for corporate control,<br />
52<br />
rents, safeguarding, 28<br />
resource-based approaches to capital<br />
heterogeneity, 73
240 <br />
return on investment (ROI), across<br />
multiple subunits, 39<br />
risk, <strong>and</strong> uncertainty <strong>and</strong> economic<br />
organization, 117–124<br />
Robbins, Lionel, on market socialism, 8<br />
Rothbard, Murray N.<br />
Coasian framework, 34<br />
on equilibrium constructs, 141<br />
on financial markets, 45<br />
on firm size, 6, 13–18<br />
mundane economics, 130<br />
on socialist economic calculation, 16,<br />
33<br />
on the traditional role of economists,<br />
166<br />
S<br />
Schumpeter, Joseph, on academic<br />
viewpoints, 164<br />
sell-offs, predictable mistakes hypothesis,<br />
57–60<br />
shareholders, control <strong>and</strong> governance<br />
mechanisms, 36<br />
“shmoo” capital, about, 71<br />
size of firms, 5–18<br />
calculation versus incentives, 9–13<br />
Rothbard on, 13–18<br />
socialist theories, 6–9<br />
social production, <strong>and</strong> networks <strong>and</strong><br />
private property, 157–162<br />
socialist theories<br />
calculation versus incentives, 9<br />
intellectuals support for, 162–169<br />
Mises on, 10–13, 176, 185<br />
pricing problem, 15<br />
Rothbard on socialist calculation<br />
debate, 16, 33<br />
size of firms, 6–9<br />
specificity, see asset specificity;<br />
heterogeneous capital;<br />
heterogeneous resources or assets;<br />
homogeneity<br />
spontaneous order, 185<br />
st<strong>and</strong>ard account, in calculation debate, 6<br />
strategizing, Williamson on, 191<br />
subjective opportunities, versus objective<br />
opportunities, 101–106<br />
subjectivist approach<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, 108<br />
subjective probability theory, 120<br />
T<br />
teams, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ial teams, 114<br />
tender offers, free rider problem, 47<br />
theory of the firm, see also black box model<br />
about, 3<br />
corporate governance, 24<br />
heterogeneous capital, 71–75<br />
transaction costs<br />
firms, 4<br />
shmoo capital, 72<br />
Williamson framework, 19, 192<br />
transfer prices<br />
estimating, 34<br />
Rothbard on, 14<br />
U<br />
uncertainty<br />
<strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, 99<br />
Kirzner’s framework, 29<br />
Mises on, 30<br />
radical uncertainty, 145<br />
<strong>and</strong> risk <strong>and</strong> economic organization,<br />
117–124<br />
units of analysis, opportunity<br />
identification, 107<br />
V<br />
Vaughn, Karen I., on price theory, 128<br />
vertical integration, Williamson on, 191<br />
W<br />
e Wealth of Networks, 157–162<br />
Wicksteedian state of rest (WSR), 135,<br />
137, 138, 139<br />
Williamson, Oliver<br />
<strong>and</strong> Austrian economists, 187–193<br />
on heterogeneous capital, 83<br />
transaction cost framework, 19<br />
World War II, influence on economics<br />
profession, 167
About the Author<br />
Peter G. Klein is an Associate Professor in the Division of Applied Social Sciences at the<br />
University of Missouri, Adjunct Professor at the Norwegian School of Economics <strong>and</strong><br />
Business Administration, <strong>and</strong> Senior Scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. His<br />
research focuses on the boundaries <strong>and</strong> internal organization of the firm, with applications<br />
to diversification, innovation, <strong>entrepreneur</strong>ship, <strong>and</strong> financial institutions. He is author<br />
or editor of four books <strong>and</strong> author of over fifty scholarly articles. Klein holds a Ph.D. in<br />
economics from the University of California, Berkeley <strong>and</strong> a B.A. from the University of<br />
North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He blogs at organizations<strong>and</strong>markets.com.